The Savage Garden

His gaze lingered meaningfully on Adam.

"I'm not sure I understand."

"My mother is a proud woman. She has always pushed herself. Maybe she is pushing herself too much. Maybe even to impress you."

"Me?"

"It's possible. Her new companion . . ."

His tone was tinged with mockery, and it rankled.

"What's the favor?" Adam asked, just shy of unfriendly.

"That you keep an eye on her. That you don't encourage her . . . to push herself too much."

"Of course."

"She is still weak."

"I understand."

They were able to put this moment of mild antagonism behind them for the remainder of the circuit. Adam even laughed when Maurizio described how his sister had once dressed the statue of Venus in one of their mother's old party gowns.

Returning to the foot of the amphitheater, Adam recovered his copy of The Divine Comedy from the bench.

"A masterpiece," observed Maurizio.

"Absolutely."

"Where have you got to?"

"The ninth circle of Hell."

Maurizio searched his memory. "The ninth circle . . . ?"

"Caina. Those who've committed crimes against their own flesh and blood. Dante named it after Cain, who killed his brother, Abel."

Later that night, lying in the big old bed, staring into the darkness, he tried to make sense of his reply to Maurizio's innocent inquiry.

The words had issued from his mouth, and in that respect they had been his. But even now he felt no ownership of them, no responsibility for them. He had not intended to speak them. They had tumbled from his lips unbidden. This might have been less troubling if there had been more truth to them.

He had, in fact, progressed well beyond the ninth circle of Hell—with its icy lake and its host of sinners frozen up to their necks—and on into Purgatory.

The most worrying thing, though, was the change his words had wrought in Maurizio. The mention of Cain and Abel had, for the briefest of moments, cast his features in stone and turned his eyes cold and crystal-hard.

HE WOKE LATE AFTER A FITFUL NIGHT'S SLEEP. THE NEW day brought a new clarity with it. He had allowed his mind to run away with him; he had imagined things that weren't there—or, at the very least, misinterpreted those that were. This realization gave him comfort, and he forced himself to think only of things that wouldn't jeopardize that.

His resolve faltered somewhat when he headed downstairs to the study. He couldn't be sure, but he had the distinct impression that someone had been through his papers on the desk. There was something not quite right about the topography of the various piles. Some sat too close together, others were too neatly ordered. The first thing he did was delve through them and pull out all of his scribblings relating to Emilio's death. These he burned in the grate.

He made his way to the cavernous, brick-vaulted kitchen in the south wing, Maria's spotless domain. She was nowhere to be found, although the air was thick with the caustic odor of bleach liberally and recently applied. It was Sunday; maybe she was at church.

The room gave little away about its tenant aside from a whisper of brisk and efficient orderliness. The surfaces were clear, the fresh fruit and vegetables neatly piled in their terra-cotta bowls, the copper pans back on the long shelf, arranged from left to right in ascending order of size. There was certainly no visible record of the small feast Maria had prepared for him and Signora Docci the evening before.

The dinner had been a subdued affair at first. Visibly depleted by her foray into Florence, Signora Docci had nevertheless reported the trip in some detail, describing a visit she had paid to an old friend—"Her husband is a homosexual, but after all these years she still cannot see it." She went on to list the numerous purchases she had made, everything from a fennel-flavored salami to an antique ebony walking stick, which she had handed to him across the candlelight of their table on the back terrace.

It had a whalebone pommel in the form of a human skull. Adam stared at the pale, carved death's-head.

"It's appropriate," said Signora Docci. "I shall be clutching it until the end. I don't mind being reminded of that fact."

Fearful that he was being drawn out of his conversational depth, Adam headed for shore. He asked her about the skulls in the study, the ones high up in the cabinet behind the desk—orangutan skulls, if he had understood Maria correctly.

"My father was a naturalist, a botanist. This was before he became an archaeologist. He was many other things too. He was a . . . disoriented man, I can see that now. At the time it was, well, exciting."

They were indeed orangutan skulls, keepsakes from a trip the family had made to the Dutch East Indies in the last century.

Signora Docci said she couldn't remember if her mother had put up a fight when her father first proposed that the whole family travel with him. In fact, there was much she couldn't recall about that period in her life, being only six years old in 1884, the year they steamed out of Livorno.

"Your Mr. Darwin was to blame, with his theories of evolution and natural selection. My father was a scientist, but he was also a religious man, a strict Catholic; it was not easy for him to accept the new ideas. He fought them for twenty years with words, then he went in search of the evidence his arguments lacked. That's why he dragged us halfway around the world."

Her memories of the East might have been patchy, but they were somehow no less vivid for it. She could recall the grandeur of her parents' stateroom on the boat over. She remembered the latitude starting to tell on familiar constellations, the Great Bear's tail dipping below the horizon as they slipped southward on the Suez Canal. This phenomenon was pointed out to her by a Scotsman many years her senior with whom she developed a close relationship (but only, she now realized, because her nanny had been so eager to spend time in the company of Walter F. Peploe—the F stands for foolish, Nanny had said).

Walter F. Peploe claimed to be an expert on all matters pertaining to the weather, and he certainly had the equipment to prove it. The captain allowed him to lash a louvered cabinet fitted with thermometers and other paraphernalia to a spar in the after-part of the ship. His pride and joy, though, was what he called his "Richard" barograph—a free-swinging contraption that he'd rigged in his cabin, and which gave accurate atmospheric readings irrespective of the ship's roll. He was adamant that all vessels should be fitted with such a device if they were to avoid the perils of a sudden tempest. His stated aim in life was to persuade the Dutch authorities in Java to adopt the barograph on all government vessels plying the treacherous waters of the East Indies, and thereby make his fortune.

He was a little disappointed when their own ship's passage of the Indian Ocean unfolded without incident, even if the clement weather was borne out by the readings on his barograph. Denied the opportunity of forewarning the captain of some impending climatic disaster, he devoted his time to investigating the idiosyncrasies of the ocean currents. This involved dropping numerous messages over the side of the ship, and to this end he regularly dispatched the young Signora Docci to loot empty beer bottles from the ship's pantry—considerably more bottles, it seemed to her, than the actual number of messages he spent so much of his time dictating to Nanny back in his cabin.

Maybe some of those bottles were cast up on foreign shores, their notes returned, as requested, to his home address in Glasgow. If they were, he never got to know of it. Within six months of their arrival in Java, a Dutch postal packet went down with all hands in a typhoon off the island of Celebes. Walter F. Peploe was among those listed missing, presumed dead. "The silly fool," Nanny had said. "I can just see him at the end with his stupid barograph, oh so pleased with himself, shouting 'See, I told you so!'"

News of the meteorologist's untimely end only reached the Doccis just before they boarded the boat home, after a trying year in the tropics. Most of their time had been spent on Borneo, with a brief interlude in northern Sumatra, because that island was also home to orangutans—the great apes that had lured her father halfway around the world.

Again, her memories were patchy yet precise. She could recall the Dutch gentlemen, kind and courtly, dressing for dinner in heavy black tailcoats despite the enervating heat and humidity. They were forever smoking cigars and drinking gin and bitters. She also remembered the black teeth of the natives (considered a mark of beauty), the milky white water of the coral reefs and the smoke of the volcanoes rising in misty clouds against the clear blue sky. Then there was the virgin forest that clad almost everything and called no one master. This was where they spent the greater part of their time, beneath the dense green canopy, where only the odd stray sunbeam penetrated to the mulchy forest floor. There were no views in the forest, no horizons, just the trees closing in behind you as you traveled through it. And then there was the eternal imminence of death.

She had a strong recollection of the natives on Sumatra huddling in the treetops whenever the tigers came, which was often. There were no tigers on Borneo, but the banteng—the wild buffalo—was just as feared. It attacked for no apparent reason, and with lightning speed. One time a rhinoceros broke from a bamboo thicket, sundering their rank of bearers, leaving a path as broad as a cart track behind it in the matted undergrowth. And of course there were the snakes, the stuff of childhood nightmares. The king cobra had been known to pursue men for many miles, although if you had the presence of mind to shed one of your garments, it would halt to attack that, buying you precious moments to escape.

She described how they had emerged one morning from their hut to find a giant python coiled in a wooden cage, unable to escape, having swallowed whole the former occupant of the cage, a goat they kept for its milk.

Her most vivid memories, though, and the most disturbing, were of her father, of his physical and then his mental deterioration. When he wasn't hunting orangutans, he was preparing their skins and skeletons. He would emerge from his makeshift charnel house exhausted, reeking of putrefaction, his hands cut and red, raw from the arsenical soap he'd applied to the bones to deter insects. The feet of the trestle table he worked on were placed in bowls of water—a barrier to the ever-present ants—but somehow they always found a way onto his specimens. When he began to take this as a personal affront, her mother started to worry. When he threatened to shoot one of the bearers for sneaking sips of the arrack in which he preserved his pelts, it was time to talk of calling a halt to the venture.

He resisted the suggestion, insisting that the skins and skeletons were a lucrative source of income—which they were, zoological museums paid handsomely for both—and rejecting the counterargument that he had traveled to the tropics in the name not of Mammon but of Science.

With hindsight, Signora Docci went on, it was clear that the expedition was doomed from the first. It was the final stab of a desperate man intent on debunking Darwin. To her father's credit, his position had shifted since The Origin of Species was first published, moving from one of knee-jerk ridicule to a more tempered assessment of the scientific facts. The third phase of his own private evolution had taken the form of a preemptive strike: there was nothing wrong with Darwin's theories of natural selection because the most esteemed Christian thinkers, including Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, had already sanctioned a kind of "derivative creation"—the argument being that when God declared "Let the waters produce" and "Let the earth produce," he was conferring forces on the elements that enabled them, in accordance with his laws of nature, to produce various species of organic beings. Her father's efforts to harmonize the new science with Catholic orthodoxy soon foundered, though, as he struggled to bend the words of the venerable theologians to his own ends.

Instead, he reached for another theory—his last, and the one that had carried him and his family to the East Indies. This conceded to Darwin the development of new species by natural selection, man included, while allowing for a divine, overarching plan. Put simply, her father argued that after innumerable generations of influence, natural selection had run its course, spent its load. All life on earth had now entered an era of "conservative heredity" in which the power of adaptation in organisms had slowed to the point of being almost nonexistent. This theory permitted a return to the old idea of the absolute fixity of living species, with man at the top of the pyramid, as intended by God.

Where better to search for proof of this than among the anthropoids, the order of great apes whose existence now haunted man like some ancestral ghost? It was a matter of reliable record that two types of orangutan inhabited Borneo, living side by side, even nesting in the same trees. The mayas tjaping (as it was called by the locals) was a larger animal, with a square head flanked by fatty cheek pads. The mayas kassa was slighter, its face narrower, more delicately featured.

From the presence of orangutans on the neighboring island of Sumatra—the only other place on the planet where they were to be found—one could safely conclude that all orangutans shared a common heritage reaching back to a distant epoch when a land connection existed between the two islands. The big question— and one that her father believed answered itself—was this: given the separation of the Bornean and Sumatran orangutans hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years previously, why had the two populations not evolved independently of each other according to the Darwinian model? By all accounts, they were the same, right down to the subtle differences of physiognomy between the two types of orangutan, both of which were also present on Sumatra.

This wasn't to say Darwin was wrong—there was too much evidence in favor of his evolutionary theory—simply that he was no longer right. The power of heredity had evidently increased since the primordial era to the point that living organisms were now fixed and immutable.

The logic was sound, even to her mother's skeptical ears, or she wouldn't have consented to accompany her husband to one of the least hospitable corners of the planet.

There was only one problem.

After a few months on Borneo, her father had identified only one type of orangutan—the mayas tjaping, big and square-headed. Some had fatty cheek-expansions, while others didn't, but this distinction seemed to be no more than a feature of age in the male of the species. It was looking increasingly likely that the sound logic was based on unsound evidence. There was only one way to tell.

It was on their trip to Sumatra that her father almost lost his mind, and on a couple of occasions his life (Dutch authority in the northern province of Aceh extending no further than the range of their guns from a handful of forts). During his time there, he shot, skinned and prepared the skeletons of more than fifteen orangutans. They, too, were all of one type—a different type, smaller than the mayas tjaping, with narrower faces and hair of a paler hue than their Bornean cousins. For that was what they clearly were: cousins, and several times removed.

Her father must have recognized the deep irony of his predicament, but he refused to accept it. Only after they had all returned to Borneo, and after another spate of slaughter, was he forced to concede the inevitable: the findings of his fellow naturalists who had visited the Malay archipelago before him were flawed, and by following in their footsteps he had not only failed in his mission to challenge Darwinian thinking, he had actually lent weight to it.

There were indeed two types of orangutan, but one type inhabited Borneo, the other Sumatra. Geographically divided, the species had adapted itself according to the demands of two different environments. And there was no reason whatsoever to assume that this wasn't an ongoing situation.

His only consolation came from his wife. Signora Docci's long- suffering mother tried to make him see that he had made an important contribution to the sum of zoological knowledge. He might even have identified a new subspecies of primate. There was certainly a strong case to be made for this. Most in his position would have leapt at the chance of laying claim to a part of the Tree of Life, even if it was just one small bifurcation at the end of a branch.

Not her father.

On their return to Italy, he resigned his post at the university, destroyed all his papers relating to the expedition and turned his attention to archaeology, immersing himself in the lost culture of the Etruscans. He kept only two mementoes of his time in the East Indies, but strangely they were the most significant reminders of his failure—the orangutan skulls in the study cabinet, manifestly different: one Bornean, the other Sumatran.

Adam had barely spoken a word during Signora Docci's account of her childhood adventure, more than content to be carried along by her colorful tales and the soft, measured tones of her voice. When she, too, fell silent, his power of speech did not return.

Signora Docci gave an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry. I have bored you.

"No. You haven't. It's interesting."

"The reminiscences of an old lady? I doubt it."

"Really. It must have been a fascinating time, man struggling to come to terms with who he really was . . . is."

"Oh, I doubt we ever will." She took a sip of wine. "Men like my father went in search of Eden, but they found a far more savage garden."

Adam hesitated, uncertain about raising the subject. "The scar on Antonella's forehead . . ."

Signora Docci smiled. "I should have known you'd see it. The crest on the skull from Borneo . . ."

"Yes."

"Who knows? I'm not superstitious, but maybe it is punishment for what he did to those poor creatures. It was a massacre. And after they were dead, he desecrated their bodies." She glanced off into the night, then up at the pale sickle blade of a moon. "Or maybe it was my punishment—for failing to stop him."

"You were too young."

"Don't underestimate the power of a daughter over her father." She paused, pensive. "I knew some of them—quite well in fact, and I stood by and watched. There was one . . . near Marop ... a female, a mother. I called her Sabinetta. She used to break off branches and throw them at us every time we went near. When they finally shot her, she wedged herself in the fork of a durian tree and men had to go up to bring her down." She gave a small smile. "They didn't go, not at first, they thought she was pretending. They do, you know. And they're strong, very strong. There are lots of stories, stories with pythons, crocodiles . . ."

She leaned forward, her eyes gleaming in the candlelight, and Adam caught a brief glimpse of her as a young girl bent forward over a campfire, hanging on every word of the stories as they'd been told to her.

"Nothing in the forest is as strong, that's what the Dayaks say. Maybe they are right, I don't know. But I have seen an orang snap off a branch as thick as your arm like that—"

She twisted her clenched fist in the air. Bony fingers unfolded from the fist, reaching for the bottle of red wine. Adam beat her to it. He was filling her glass when Maria appeared silently from the gloom beyond the candlelight.

She said something to Signora Docci. The words came too fast for Adam to understand, but it sounded like a reprimand. She shot him a withering look as she retired with their plates.

"She's right," said Signora Docci. "It is late and I have had a long day."

Adam rose to help her from her chair.

"Thank you," she said, leaning on her new cane with its death's- head pommel. "It is strange that you asked about the skulls."

"Why?"

"Because I went to see her today—Sabinetta. She is in the Zoological Museum in Florence."

Adam offered to accompany her upstairs to her room. "Stay," she insisted, "finish the wine. Maybe Maria will make you a coffee if you ask her nicely . . . although somehow I doubt it," she added with a smile. "Good night, Adam."

"Good night."

She took his hand and squeezed it. "It's a pleasure to have you here."

He watched her make her way uncertainly across the terrace. She stopped and turned before entering the drawing room.

"I said my father destroyed all his papers. He thought he had.

When I realized what he was going to do, I hid an album of photographs. If you're interested, it's in the cabinet under the shelves in the library, the ones near the study. The key is behind a copy of your Mr. Milton's Paradise Lost."

Which is exactly where Adam found it twelve hours later, after his solitary Sunday morning breakfast on the terrace.

There were several photograph albums in the cabinet, but it stood out for its superior age, its tooled leather binding scuffed and cracked. The photos inside also betrayed their age, moments in time trapped in washed-out sepia tones. Many were blurred, the faces shrouded in ghostly veils where the subjects had moved. This was almost always the case with Signora Docci's father—a sign perhaps of the impatience she had hinted at over dinner the night before. She, on the other hand—in her pinafore dress, bonnet and lace-up boots, already tall for her tender years—had obviously taken the photographer's instructions to heart. In every shot she stood as rigid as a marionette, her arms hanging limp at her sides. He recognized her immediately from the penetrating gaze of the wide-spaced eyes fixed directly on the camera lens.

The photographs were arranged chronologically, beginning with the boat trip over. In one, a rangy, fair-headed young man in a dark suit and a high collar was standing proudly on the deck beside a louvered cabinet raised on legs. This could only have been Walter F. Peploe, the Scottish meteorologist destined for a watery grave, and it occurred to Adam that there must be a whole other family out there somewhere who would cherish the photograph far more than the Doccis ever had.

It was hard to imagine Walter F. Peploe reciprocating the interest shown in him by "Nanny" as she appeared in the photographs— short, solid, and with the suspicion of a mustache—even if Signora Docci had strongly hinted at some kind of tryst between the pair.

One of the few photos with a handwritten caption showed her father gathered with a group of other European gentlemen, all dressed in evening wear and standing beside a billiard table at somewhere called the Harmonie Club in Batavia. He was one of only two men whose hair wasn't close-shorn. His dense, drooping mustache concealed his mouth and lent his face a grave mien, although his eyes suggested he was smiling, unlike his companions.

From the moment they arrived in Borneo, he was only ever to be seen in a white suit, usually worn with a black necktie. He was a slight and vaguely comical figure, even when brandishing a rifle over some dead animal. Signora Docci's mother stood a good half- head taller, and her ever-present parasol only accentuated the height difference, making her tower over him. Standing together in front of a surprisingly modern-looking bungalow, they looked more like two parties to a property sale than husband and wife.

There was a run of what appeared to be pointless photos taken from the ground looking up into the treetops. Closer inspection revealed spindly figures hanging from branches high above. Brought to earth, the orangutans were impressive creatures, even in death—far more impressive than Signora Docci's father or any of the grinning, sharp-featured natives invariably gathered around. One giant specimen, shaggy haired and barrel-chested, had been lashed by its wrists to the rail of a veranda, crucified for the camera. The vast span of its arms exceeded the height of the tallest man present by a good two feet. Its dislocated jaw animated its face. The unfortunate creature seemed to be giving a lopsided laugh at its own predicament.

Unsettled by the image, Adam skimmed the remaining pages. He closed the album, thought about replacing it, then removed the others and laid them on the floor in front of him. He could permit himself a quick look. There was still no sign of Maria, and Signora Docci was obviously sleeping late after her trying day.

There were four albums in total, each covering a two- or three- year period between the 1890s and the early 1920s. All were a testament to the privileged existence enjoyed by the Doccis. There were race meetings and open-topped roadsters and summer holidays at exclusive beachside hotels. There were walks in the Alps, trips in Venetian gondolas, and camel rides at the pyramids.

Adam flipped through the albums twice. The second time, he arranged them chronologically and studied the photographs more carefully. He watched Signora Docci grow from a gawky teenager into an elegant young woman, a wife, and finally a mother. It was the first time he had seen any photos of Emilio, and they contradicted his private theory that firstborn sons were generally shorter than their younger brothers. Emilio was lean and long-limbed from birth. Facially, he drew more from his mother, inheriting her large eyes and her broad, high cheekbones. These features, combined with his long neck, gave him a faintly startled air, which reminded Adam of something—he couldn't say what exactly— some kind of animal or bird. Maurizio was closer to his father in build and looks: broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with neat, even features. Adam searched for signs of Antonella in her girl-mother, Caterina. There were few, apart from the straight, lustrous hair and traces of the same devilish grin.

The very last photo was a studio portrait of the whole family taken in 1921 in Madrid. The women were seated on a sagging divan, the first soft creases of age also evident in Signora Docci's face. Caterina was seated to her left, glowering in sullen rebellion, a function of her thirteen or fourteen years, or maybe thrown into a mood by her bobbed hair, which didn't flatter her. The men stood behind: Benedetto—the paterfamilias, his hands gripping the back of the divan in a commanding manner—flanked by his two sons. Maurizio's forehead was stippled with adolescent acne. Emilio's hairline had already receded farther than his father's.

Adam stared at the photograph for quite a time. Something about it bothered him. It was a vague and impalpable sensation. This was enough, though, to make him remove the photograph from its gilt corner mounts. He replaced the albums, locked the cabinet door and made for the study.

He was still poring over the image a short while later when Signora Docci showed up. She entered the study from the back terrace, the approaching tap of her new cane buying him enough time to slip the photo beneath the desk blotter and grab a book lying nearby.

"Good morning," she said.

"Morning."

"Did you sleep well?"

"Yes," he lied.

"It must have been the strong sedative."

Adam smiled. "I enjoyed your stories. Really."

She was wearing walking shoes, dusty from use, and there was a wine bottle in her free hand.

"You've been out?" he asked.

"A walk. A good walk. It's nice to see."

"What?"

"They can't quite believe it—me, on my feet again. Maybe they're pretending, but they seem to be happy."

"I'm sure they're not."

"Pretending or happy?"

He smiled.

She placed the bottle of wine on the desk. "For your lunch with Antonella. You haven't forgotten, I hope." "No."

"It's from the cellar—good wine, not our own, don't worry."

He shed the tie as he entered the garden through the yew hedge. The jacket followed when he reached the base of the amphitheater. He opened the notebook and pulled out the photograph of the Doccis, gazing up at Flora on her pedestal, calling on her to help him.

He felt foolish appealing to a lump of stone, but he had brought the photograph with him for a reason. Why deny it? There was something about the garden that made him view the world differently, even act differently. He could feel it now, some kind of energy within him—not anger, not defiance, but something close, something else. Whatever it was, it had been responsible for his blurting out the stuff about fratricide to Maurizio, he knew that, just as he knew that what he'd seen in Maurizio's eyes was the cold clutch of fear, of guilt.

Ten minutes later there were two cigarette stubs on the stone bench, and the photograph was still mocking him. He left abruptly, frustrated, making for the bottom of the garden, opting for the pathway that ran through the woods via the glade of Adonis.

A light breeze rustled the leaves high overhead, the first hint of wind in almost a week. The grateful shade fell away as he entered the clearing, the high noonday sun beating down on the circular patch of pasture. He made for the statue at its center.

Venus was frozen in the act of stooping toward her dead love, reaching for him with her left hand. Adonis lay sprawled on his back, limbs splayed, eyes closed, his mouth agape, as if some dreadful cry had died on his lips with his last breath. He was still clutching his bow, the weapon that had failed to protect him against the wild boar while he was out hunting. The file compiled by Signora Docci's father only made mention of a wild animal. Ovid himself had been more specific: Adonis was gored to death by a wild boar.

He was pleased he'd gone to the source. Maybe there was some kind of symbolic association with the Docci family. A boar figured prominently in their coat-of-arms.

A noise drew his gaze from the statue. The treetops ringing the glade were being swept by a hurrying little breeze. It rose quickly to become a wind, firm and steady. The treetops swayed like drunken lovers on a dance floor. Then they dipped their heads in unison before a sustained gust, and a few moments later the wind fell to earth, patting down the parched grass and tousling Adam's hair with its warm hand.

He felt a sudden sense of unease, strong enough to drive him from the glade. Regaining the pathway at the tree line, he glanced over his shoulder, half expecting to see someone keeping Venus and Adonis company. But they were alone.

Antonella had given him directions. A track ran close to the bottom of the memorial garden, and if he followed it to the south, it would eventually climb through olive groves and past her farmhouse.

He found the track without difficulty, but something impelled him to double back to the Temple of Echo and take one last look up the garden. The pasture climbed gently toward the grotto with its bodyguard of cypresses. From here the ground rose sharply to the amphitheater—Flora pearl-white in her concave shell, the triumphal arch looming above her on the crest.

The wind had swelled and was now sweeping straight down the valley toward him, pouring in a constant flow, like invisible liquid. He stood stock-still, staring into it, letting it wash past him into the trees. His eyes started to water. He blinked a few times.

That's when it came to him.

Gregor Mendel.

A name from his school days. Biology classes. Mendelian genetics.

He pulled the photograph of the Doccis from the notebook. His eyes darted across it—from father to mother, then to each of the children in turn.

Emilio, Maurizio and Caterina all shared their parents' obsidian eyes; but even if they hadn't, even if one of them had been born with blue eyes, that would have been okay by Mendel. It would simply mean that both parents carried a recessive gene for blue eyes, which, if combined, would make for a blue-eyed child. They were more likely to have dark-eyed offspring, but it was possible. It was impossible, on the other hand, for two blue-eyed parents— each carrying a double dose of the recessive gene—to produce a dark-eyed child.

If Adam was right, then the same rule held for another physical trait: the earlobes. Unattached earlobes, where there was an indentation between the bottom of the ear and the side of the face, symbolized the dominant gene. Which meant, therefore, that two "recessive" people with earlobes directly attached to the side of the face could not have a child with unattached earlobes. It seemed ridiculous, but it was true.

He checked the photo one more time.

There was no mistake. Emilio Docci was the only one in the family whose earlobes hung free. Not dramatically so. But it strongly suggested that he was not his parent's son.

No, it was possible to be more precise.

The clear physical resemblance between Emilio and Signora Docci placed her maternity beyond doubt. It followed, therefore, that Emilio was not his father's son, or rather, that he had not sprung from the loins of the man standing to his left, the man gripping the back of the divan in a parody of patriarchal self-importance.

The unavoidable question had barely formed itself in his head when the answer came to him. Maybe it had always been there. Maybe it was written in his conversations with Signora Docci, but he had failed to read it.

The air of mild alarm conferred on Emilio by his large eyes and his long neck had struck a dim note of recognition in Adam, but he was wrong to have ascribed these traits to a passing similarity with some indeterminate creature or bird. He had seen the look before, yes, but it had been in an old framed photograph hanging on the wall of a room in Cambridge: a photograph of the Jesus College rowing crew, eight gangling young men clutching their oars like pikestaffs.

"Don't be too impressed," Professor Leonard had said to him when he remarked on the photograph, "I'm not sure we ever won a single race. In fact, I know we didn't."

ADAM WAS LATE FOR LUNCH, NOT THAT IT MATTERED. The other guests were considerably later, and Antonella herself was running well behind schedule. In fact, she was foraging around in a sorry-looking vegetable patch beside the farmhouse when he appeared up the track. She was wearing a crumpled T-shirt, shorts and no shoes. She looked magnificent. And angry.

"Someone has been stealing my tomatoes."

It was hard to imagine anyone wanting to steal her tomatoes; they were so small and pitiful.

"Forgive them. They must really be in need."

Antonella's affronted scowl softened to a smile, and she laughed.

It was a narrow house built around two sides of an open yard paved with bricks. On the third side rose a barn, connected to the house by a high wall with an arched gateway bearing a carved escutcheon of the Docci family, with its rampant boar. The stucco on the house had crumbled away in parts to reveal stone walls beneath. An exterior staircase led to the human accommodation on the second floor—"The animals live downstairs, well, not at the moment."

The rooms were barely furnished; they didn't require it. The floors, doors, ceilings and walls were all features in their own right, all ancient, all handcrafted. Her bedroom consisted of little more than a wrought-iron bed, a chest of drawers and a couple of pictures. It was enough. The sight of her discarded nightshirt on the unmade bed was mildly distracting.

A ham was boiling away on the stove in the kitchen, the largest room in the house by some margin. Its beams were browned with age and smoke, and there was a table big enough to plan an invasion on. They weren't going to be eating here, though; they were going to be eating outside. Which is where Adam came in.

His job was to rig up a tarpaulin as a sunshade in the yard. Everything he required was in the barn, including the trestle table and chairs.

Antonella approved of his construction, and once he'd laid the table and folded the napkins and found cushions for some of the chairs, she joined him outside, rewarding him with a glass of the wine he'd brought. She examined the label approvingly before she poured.

"I thought you were a student."

"Grandmother's best."

"To grandmother," she said, offering her glass to be clinked.

"Grandmother. May she live to be a hundred."

"Oh, don't worry, she will. Maurizio is convinced of it."

"Maurizio?"

She smiled enigmatically.

"What?" demanded Adam.

"He is a bit nervous, I think. No one knows what her plans are now that she has . . . come to life again. He has waited a long time for the villa. He thought it would be his when Nonna died."

"I hope he doesn't blame me."

"You?"

He told her how Maurizio had searched him out in the garden with his concerns about his mother. He told her he had detected a degree of antagonism on Maurizio's part, although he didn't reveal that he had repaid like with like. He also mentioned the painkillers, reckoning she had a right to know. Antonella seemed more surprised by the fact that Maria had shared the information about the doctor's visit with Maurizio.

"She doesn't like Maurizio."

"Or maybe she's just genuinely concerned for your grandmother."

"Maybe."

"I know I am. She could be running herself into the ground."

"If she is, nothing will stop her."

"That's very fatalistic."

The slight barb wasn't lost on Antonella. Her eyes fastened on him, dark and hard.

"I love my grandmother, but I also know her well."

They were rescued by the sound of an approaching vehicle. It blew into the yard in a cloud of white dust: one car, three couples crammed into it. The yard was soon filled with the sounds of laughter.

Two hours later, it was still echoing off the walls. No amount of food or wine—and both kept rolling down the staircase from the house—could dampen it. They even played a game of hoops in between two of the courses. The game was a gift to Antonella from her brother, Edoardo, a private joke lost on the rest of the company, and one the siblings refused to share.

Edoardo had his sister's jet-black hair and olive skin. He was a year or so younger than her, big and ebullient, humorous and shrewd. It was hard not be sucked along in his slipstream. The only person who seemed impervious to its pull was his girlfriend, Grazia—a fellow law student. She was also the only person who didn't speak English, not that this stopped her trying to speak it, and at the breakneck speed she spoke her own language. The result was a tumbling Babel of words, most of them French. Whenever Edoardo tried to correct her, she would round on him and say, "Zitto! Capisce. Non e vero, Adamo?"

"Shut up. He understands. Don't you, Adam?"

To which Adam would invariably reply, "Absolutely."

"Absolutely" became something of a calling cry. It started when Enrico, newly wed to Venetian Claudia with the cornflower-blue eyes, was offered a top-up of wine. "Absolutely," he replied. And it went from there.

Italy is changing fast, now that we've joined the Common Market. Absolutely. Domenico Modugno should have won the Euro- vision Song Contest with "Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu." Absolutely.

The word only lost its currency when, as the coffee hit the table, someone remarked that the Christian Democrat Party was riddled with former Fascists.

"Be careful what you say," chipped in the cartoonist who wanted to be a painter. "Their uncle was a Fascist, was he not?"

It was Edoardo who replied. "Absolutely. And it was Fascists who killed him. So what does that tell you?"

The cartoonist apologized for the comment, was forgiven, and the word didn't rear its head again. The mood remained buoyant, but Adam now found himself struggling to keep up. The banter and the bonhomie had been welcome diversions; they had allowed him to forget about the photograph tucked between the pages of his notebook lying on the sideboard in the kitchen. But now that Emilio had barged his way into the conversation, back into Adam's thoughts, there was no ignoring him.

While the others rattled on around the table, his mind wandered elsewhere—to Gregor Mendel and recessive genes and ear- lobes and the old photo of the rowing crew on the wall of Professor Leonard's rooms in Jesus College. He tried to prevent them straying further afield, into darker territory, where his conversations with Fausto lurked.

He chipped in from time to time, covering for his distraction, and when the other guests finally left, he was relieved to be forced back to the world around him, pumping hands and kissing cheeks and waving as the car disappeared up the hard white track to San Casciano, carried on a billowing dust cloud.

He said he'd help tidy up, an offer gratefully accepted by Antonella. They worked hard, methodically, until all that remained was a pile of dripping crockery on the draining board and a red wine stain on the bricks in the yard, where a glass had been toppled.

They retired to a makeshift wooden bench on a grassy rise beside the barn. It was a calm and peaceful spot, the shifting shadows retouching the landscape as the sun slowly dropped away to the west.

"What a place to live," said Adam. "You're very lucky."

"Oh, I pay for it. The estate needs all the money it can get."

"Things are bad?"

"Not just here—everywhere."

She explained that the family that had occupied the house for countless generations had recently moved on, abandoning the countryside for the town, as many were now doing. The moment new tenants were found, she'd be out.

He was surprised to hear that the estate was run on a sharecrop- ping basis—mezzadria—an arrangement whereby a family received a house and some land rent-free from the Doccis in exchange for half of the produce generated.

"It sounds almost feudal."

"That's because it is—from the Middle Ages—but things are changing now. There are politicians in Rome who say mezzadria must go. If it does, everything here will change. My grandmother worries a lot. I tell her not to. Maurizio is rich, he will make things work."

"What does he do?"

"He buys and sells things."

"What kind of things?"

"The kind that make a profit. He also has two factories in Prato, for clothes. He has made a lot of money since the war."

Adam hesitated. "What was Emilio like?"

"Emilio? Why do you ask?"

"Just curious. He was mentioned at lunch."

She helped herself to another of his cigarettes. "Well, he was a Fascist, it's true. Many people were, my grandparents too, at the beginning. They stopped believing." She stared off into the distance. "I was young, but I remember him. He was always reading books. And he made me laugh. He made us all laugh." She smiled wistfully. "The funny Fascist."

"How did they get on, Emilio and Maurizio?"

Her glance said it all: What's it to you?

He was pushing too hard; he needed to tread carefully.

"I mean, their politics were different. Maurizio was a partisan, no?"

Was it motive enough for murder?

"Who told you that?"

"A chap called Fausto, from San Casciano."

She didn't know him, although the name rang a vague bell.

"It's true, Maurizio was a partisan, and a socialist. He claims he still is a socialist." There was a note of good-natured cynicism in her voice. "My grandmother says he fought the Germans because he was always fighting, even when he was a boy. He hates it when she says that."

But he didn't fight them the night they killed Emilio, did he?

Adam kept this observation to himself, as he did the other questions hammering away in his head. Why had her grandfather sealed off the top floor? As some kind of shrine? Shrines were conceived to be visited; they were places you went to in order to pay your respects. Why close a door and lock it? Why oblige your family to live with the painful memory, rather than allowing it to dissipate over the years? What had Maria said about that deserted floor frozen in time? "It sits over the house like a curse."

Dusk was falling when he finally left. Antonella said she'd accompany him back to the villa; she'd hardly seen her grandmother all weekend.

They took a path that wound through the olive grove beneath the farmhouse. It was her path, she said. It hadn't existed a year ago; hers were the only feet to have beaten it into existence. The air grew cooler as they worked their way down through the serried ranks of trees. Fireflies bobbed in the gathering gloom, and the smell of wild herbs came in faint waves: thyme, rosemary and mint. They barely spoke. When Antonella lost her footing on a steep bank, she gripped his arm to steady herself and his hand instinctively went to the gentle curve at the base of her back.

"Thank you," she said softly as they released each other.

His feeling of contentment faded a touch when they entered the memorial garden. He told her about the unnatural wind that had dropped to earth earlier in the day, rushing through the garden.

"Yes, it happens sometimes in summer. I don't know why." They walked on a little way. "The breath of the gods," she said absently. "That's what the Greeks called the wind."

They stopped at the foot of the amphitheater and looked up at Flora, the fireflies fussing around her like solicitous consorts.

He felt a sudden urge to share her secret, their secret. He fought the impulse, but only momentarily.

He told Antonella everything he knew. He told her about the dark wood and the triumphal arch and its anagrammatic inscription of inferno. He told her about Dante's nine circles of Hell and the second circle of the adulterers. He told it as it was, without embellishment. And when he was finished he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

Antonella didn't speak at first. When she did, it was in Italian. "Incredibile."

"Maybe I'm wrong."

"No," she said with quiet conviction.

"I can't figure out the rest of the cycle. It doesn't make sense."

"You will. It will."

"Something bad happened. I can feel it. I just can't see it."

She placed her hand on his arm and squeezed. "Bravo, Adamo. Really. Bravo."

He wasn't good with compliments, but he knew what to do when he saw her head drawing closer, her neck arching, her lips reaching for his.

They kissed gently. Then again, less gently, their tongues searching each other out. He felt the heat coming off her, and the twin pressure of her breasts against his chest.

When they finally drew apart, she said in a whisper, "I told myself I wouldn't."

"That's interesting, I told myself I would."

He could just make out her smile in the deepening darkness.

They were still holding hands when they left the garden, sidestepping through the yew hedge. They only released each other when, nearing the villa, she stopped to remove a stone from her shoe.

"Why did you tell yourself you wouldn't?"

She slipped her shoe back on and stood upright. "Because you are going soon."

"A week."

"It will only make it worse."

"But think—what a week."

He reached for her and she playfully slapped his hand away.

It came at them clear through the still night air—laughter from up at the villa. A devilish cackle. Disturbing if you'd never heard it before. More disturbing if you had.

"Oh Christ."

"What?" asked Antonella.

"Harry . . ." said Adam, breasting the steps to the back terrace. "What are you doing here?"

"What does it look like? Having dinner with a beautiful woman."

Signora Docci smiled indulgently.

"I thought you wouldn't get the money till tomorrow."

"Arrived the day you sent it."

Adam tried his best to sound pleased. "Good."

"Bad," said Harry.

"Bad?"

"It's a long story."

"It is," said Signora Docci.

Harry turned to her. "But not uninteresting."

"No, not uninteresting."

Oh Christ, thought Adam. "When did you get here?" he asked, trying to mask the strain in his voice. "A few hours ago."

Long enough to have done untold damage.

"Nice lunch?" asked Harry.

"Yes, great—sorry—this is Antonella."

Harry got to his feet. He was wearing a grubby Aertex shirt, khaki army shorts that reached well below the knee, and his feet were squeezed into black gym shoes, one of them worn away at the end so that his big toe poked through. He stooped to kiss Antonella's hand, considerately removing his cigarette before he did so. "Antonella," said Harry. "Harry," said Antonella. "Nice dress." "Nice shorts."

"Thank you. Practical in this heat." "Absolutely," said Antonella, for Adam's benefit. "Please . . ." said Harry, pulling a chair back for her. "Thank you."

"Have you eaten?" Signora Docci asked.

Adam held up his hands in surrender. "Enough for a couple of days."

"Antonella is an excellent cook."

"She certainly is," Adam replied, wondering for a moment if he was trapped in a Jane Austen novel.

Fortunately, at that moment Harry chirped up, bringing them back to some kind of reality. "So's Maria."

Maria had just stepped from the villa, carrying a tray. Harry adopted an exaggerated Italian accent. "Vitello con sugo di . . ."

"Pomodoro," said Maria.

"Pomodoro!" trumpeted Harry. "Magnifico!"

Suddenly, the Jane Austen novel didn't seem such a bad prospect. Better that than Harry's impression of Mr. Mannucci who used to sell them ice creams from the back of his van when they still lived in Kennington.

Maria produced a rare smile, surprisingly coy.

"Grazie," she said, clearing away the empty plates.

"Harry was just telling me a joke," said Signora Docci.

She looked invigorated, and maybe a little drunk. Or maybe it's the painkillers, thought Adam.

"You were in the English Channel," she went on, "in the seventeenth century."

"Right, that's right, so anyway . . . the captain of the naval frigate raises the telescope to his eye and he sees five pirate ships on the horizon, bearing down on them. 'Bring me my red shirt,' he says to his lieutenant. 'Your red shirt, sir?' 'Just do it, man.'

"Anyway, they engage the pirate ships and a fierce battle ensues. The captain's in the thick of it, fighting hand-to-hand, running pirates through all over the place. And against terrible odds they capture all five of the pirate ships. When it's over and everyone's celebrating, the lieutenant asks the captain why he asked for his red shirt. The captain says it was so that if he was wounded the men wouldn't see the blood and wouldn't lose heart. Everyone cheers— 'What a hero our captain is.' "

Harry took a short draw on his cigarette, then crushed it in the ashtray.

"So . . ." he went on, a sparkle in his eye, "a few days later they're still patroling in the Channel when another shout comes down from the crow's-nest. The captain raises the telescope to his eye and this time he sees twenty pirate ships on the horizon, bearing down on them fast. The captain lowers his glass and turns to his lieutenant. 'Lieutenant,' he says. 'Yes, Captain?' 'Bring me my brown trousers.'"

In Harry's defense, he never laughed at his own jokes. But then again, not many other people did, either. This one was different, though, this one wasn't half-bad. Even Adam found himself chuckling, partly from relief that the punch line hadn't been cruder.

Harry turned to Adam. "That one got them," he said.

Signora Docci and Antonella were still laughing when Maria appeared with the cheese platter.

The rest of dinner was an ordeal. When Adam looked at Signora Docci, he saw Professor Leonard; when he looked at Antonella, he saw himself kissing her in the garden; and when he looked at Harry, he found himself wondering if one of them had been adopted.

Harry dominated, he seized the steering wheel and told you to sit back and enjoy the ride, because that's what you were going on, whether you liked it or not. Strangely, neither Signora Docci nor Antonella appeared to mind.

Harry announced that he'd come to Italy to visit the Venice Biennale, the international art festival. This was news to Adam, and not unwelcome news—it meant Harry had somewhere else to go to. British artists were a world force to be reckoned with right now, Harry insisted, especially in the field of sculpture, his field. Lynn Chadwick had snatched the sculpture prize from under Giacometti's nose at the last Biennale, and there were many British contemporaries right up there with him, worthy heirs to Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth: Meadows, Frink, Thornton, Hoskin—mere names until he brought them to life with his vivid descriptions of their work.

These sculptors constituted a new movement, he claimed. Not for them the bald abstraction of their predecessors. Their creations were rooted in a postwar world of broken buildings and broken people. Their language was one of terror and trepidation. They tore into the human form, flaying it, tearing it limb from limb, discarding what they didn't want. And when they were done, they found themselves presenting to the world an army of creatures—part man, part beast, and sometimes part machine. As one of Harry's teachers at Corsham had said to him: "When you've seen the inside of a Sherman tank after a direct hit, it all becomes the same thing."

It was a Europe-wide movement—a new geometry of fear— and as long as there were wars or even the prospect of them, it would always have meaning.

Adam had sat through the speech many times before, but it was somehow more persuasive this time, more heartfelt. Antonella and Signora Docci certainly seemed convinced by it, firing off questions that Harry eagerly answered. And as Adam sat and watched, he felt a rare twinge of pride in his brother. It was tempered slightly by jealousy: that Harry could care so passionately about the path he'd chosen for himself.

When Signora Docci finally retired upstairs, Antonella took it as her cue to head home. She couldn't be persuaded to stay; she had a week of hard work ahead of her. This wasn't what Adam wanted

to hear, but he had to make do with a surreptitious squeeze of his arm when she kissed him good night—recognition of what had passed between them in the garden.

Thrown back on each other's company, Harry nodded over his shoulder at the villa looming above them.

"Must be a shocker to heat in winter."

"Must be."

"What happened to her face?"

"Car accident."

"Are you screwing her?"

"No."

"Mmmmm."

"I'm not screwing her, Harry."

Harry studied him with a sporting eye. "I believe you."

"That's a huge relief to me."

"And Signora Fanelli?" asked Harry, fluttering his fingers in the air. "At the Pensione Amorini?"

Adam felt a hand clutch at his heart. How the hell did Harry even know her name? Then he remembered; he had told Harry to go to the pensione and ask for directions to the villa.

"Don't be ridiculous."

"She's bloody gorgeous. And I reckon you're her type."

"Tell me, Harry, was it one or two minutes you spent in her company?"

"Aloof. Like her. Two dark horses. Cavorting together. Yes, I can see it."

"Well, you're wrong. That famous sixth sense of yours must have deserted you."

Harry weighed Adam's words. "Maybe. Yeah. Come to think of it, imagine . . . it'd be like screwing Auntie Joan."

"She's not that old."

He realized too late that he'd stumbled into one of Harry's well- laid conversational traps.

"I knew it!" Harry trumpeted.

"Keep it down, that's Signora Docci's bedroom."

Harry glanced up at the loggia. "What, not her too!?"

"Harry . . ." hissed Adam.

Harry beamed. "You little devil. She's gorgeous, dirty too, from the look of her."

Adam wasn't going to be drawn on this.

"Come on—details."

"No."

"Something. Anything."

"Has it been that long?"

Harry gave a short laugh. "Quite a while, as it happens."

Harry was curious to know if Adam intended to tell Gloria. Not for the first time, Gloria was referred to as "the girl who likes killing animals."

"Her family hunts and shoots."

"And yours lives in Purley, otherwise known as the arsehole of Croydon."

"So?"

"So are you going to let her know?"

"She ended it."

Harry nodded a couple of times. "Well, I can't say I'm upset. I never liked her."

"I know. You told her." "Did I?"

"You don't remember? She remembers."

"Well, who cares now? She's out of your life. And you, Paddler, have finally slept with a good-looking woman."

"Gloria was good-looking."

Harry heaved a weary sigh. "It's like parents and babies. They're too close. They can't see just how ugly the little buggers are." He lit a cigarette. "Love isn't just blind—it blinds."

"That's very profound. Who said it?"

"James Bond, I think."

"In a rare moment of melancholy."

Harry laughed, but Adam knew better than to relax his guard. Sure enough, Harry nudged the conversation back to Adam's other university friends.

"Come on, Paddler, face the facts—you're not one of them. They're all so bloody . . . well, rich."

"They're still people."

"They're people who like people like them. Oh, it's okay now, you're a good-looking boy with half a brain and half a sense of humor. But that bloke you hang out with, what's his name? Big ears, windpipe like a fireman's hose, father owns half of Herefordshire ..."

"Tarquin.

"Right, Tarquin. Can't you see he's humoring you? You're his piece of entertainment, the middle-class boy made good."

"You met him once."

"I'm telling you, he'll drop you as soon as he's back in the real world, and you're selling insurance."

"I'm going to work at Lloyd's."

"Selling insurance."

Adam struggled to control his temper. "You know nothing about my relationships with my friends."

"I've seen all I want to."

"You can't just write off two years of my life like that."

"Why not? You did."

"Fuck off, Harry."

Harry leaned forward and stubbed out his cigarette. "I might just take you up on that. I haven't slept in days and I've got an early start."

"You're leaving?"

"You wish. No, I thought I'd have a slog round Florence."

Heading upstairs together, Harry asked if he could borrow some of Adam's clothes. He tried on some trousers, a shirt and a linen jacket. "Christ," he said, checking himself in the wardrobe mirror, "it's little Lord Fauntleroy." He also said, "I'll need some cash."

"I just sent you some!"

"Believe me, you don't want to know."

"Believe me, I do."

"The Swiss girl came back."

"You're right, I don't want to know."

As Harry was leaving his room, Adam asked, "Why are you really here, Harry? In Italy?"

Harry hesitated. "I'm not sure you're ready to hear it."

"I say, Holmes, not the Giant Rat of Sumatra?"

Harry's blank expression broke into a smile. It was a private joke, a cause of much amusement to them as boys: a reference to a Conan Doyle short story in which Sherlock Holmes makes passing mention to Watson of a terrible incident in his past involving "the Giant Rat of Sumatra ... a story for which the world is not yet prepared."

"Demmit, Watson," snapped Harry, "I said never to mention the Giant Rat of Sumatra."

TRUE TO HIS WORD, HARRY WAS UP EARLY. IN FACT, he'd already left the villa by the time adam awoke.

The prospect of a full day free from Harry's unpredictable presence was a big relief. He needed time and space to concentrate. His work on the garden had ground to an almost complete standstill in the past few days.

He had read deep into the night in order to finish The Divine Comedy, rising up through Paradise with Dante to the poet's final, blinding vision of the universe bound together by God's love. Adam had experienced no such epiphany, though, no Damascene revelation. As far as he could tell, there were no further associations between the poem and the memorial garden, aside from a brief mention of Apollo just after Dante and Beatrice have made their ascent from Purgatory to Paradise and Dante calls on the sun god to help him in the last stages of his journey.

Any hopes that he would see things differently in the morning soon vanished. After breakfast he read through his copious notes, searching for missed connections, but drew a glaring blank. Heading for the garden, he barged through the gap in the yew hedge and made a brisk tour, defiantly disinterested. This slightly curious logic—that if he treated the place with indifference it might be more inclined to speak to him—proved unsound. If anything, he found it more inert, more stubbornly unresponsive, than he'd ever known it to be. Even the statues seemed bored by their roles, like a troupe of jaded actors at the end of a long run.

Completing the circuit, he stopped at the grotto and entered. The low morning sunlight slanted through the entrance, dispersing the Stygian gloom. Apollo, Daphne and Peneus shone white as weathered bone against the rock-encrusted wall, a moment of drama trapped in marble by an unknown and rather heavy- handed sculptor.

Peneus seemed strangely uninvolved with the scene unfolding above him, quite content where he was, sprawled along the rim of the marble basin, cradling his water urn. His expression was hardly that of a man who has just answered his daughter's plea to turn her into a laurel tree. Rather, he wore a look of weary resignation, the sort of look worn by Adam's father when asked to perform some tedious domestic chore.

As for Daphne, her face suggested there were far worse fates to suffer than metamorphosis. She was frozen in the act of turning her head to look behind her at the pursuing figure of Apollo. Maybe her expression was intended as one of welcome release from unwelcome advances, but there was something ecstatic in the curl of her lips that implied she was actually enjoying herself.

He studied Apollo carefully—Apollo, his last remaining link to The Divine Comedy. He was reaching for Daphne, but the gesture was hardly fraught with desperation and hopelessness, as it was in Bernini's famous sculpture of the same subject in the Villa Borghese. In fact, here in the grotto they looked more like an amorous young couple playing tag in the woods.

His gaze dropped to the unicorn, its head bowed toward the empty marble trough. He ran his fingers over the stump of its missing horn, his mind turning to the drawing he'd come across in the papers gathered together by Signora Docci's father. It was a pen-and-ink sketch of the grotto executed in the late sixteenth century, therefore almost contemporaneous with the construction of the garden. The anonymous artist wasn't exactly overburdened with talent, but it was pretty evident that the unicorn had been missing its horn even way back then.

Was it possible it had never had a horn? If so, what did this mean? If a unicorn dipping its horn into the water signified the purity of the source feeding the garden, what did a hornless unicorn signify? Impure water, not fit to drink?

Instinct told him that nothing in the grotto had been left to chance, that each and every one of its peculiarities was a necessary part of another story buried away in the composition, according to Federico Docci's instructions.

The harder he strained to see it, though, the more it receded from him. In his frustration, he found himself talking to the sculptures, exhorting them to share their secret. He was still doing this when a shift in the shadows at his feet announced the appearance of someone in the entrance behind him.

Maria had been out gathering wildflowers. An unruly bunch of them lay in the shallow wicker basket hanging at her elbow. Her eyes ranged over the interior, establishing that—yes—Adam was alone. And—yes—he was obviously losing his marbles.

"Another beautiful day," said Adam.

"Yes."

"Not as humid as yesterday." "No." Maria raised the basket. "I have to put these in water."

Adam winced as she left, a flush of embarrassment warming his cheeks, sweat pearling his forehead. He tried and failed to see the humor of the situation. Maria obviously experienced less difficulty, because a moment later he heard the dim but unmistakable sound of laughter.

He waited awhile before creeping from the grotto, eyes screwed up against the glare. He lit a cigarette. It was his first of the day and he was hit by a wave of light-headedness.

He glared at Flora—twisted on her plinth, perched high above her kingdom—and he found himself thinking that she was to blame. The goddess had issued an edict of silence to her subjects; she had commanded them to shun his advances. Why, though? Why allow him to glimpse a part of the story, then shut him out?

Only one answer presented itself to him.

Okay, he thought, let's do it your way.

He was nearing the villa, still working out how best to broach the sensitive subject with Signora Docci, when he saw her on the lower terrace, standing at the balustrade, looking out over the plunging olive grove. He wondered if Maria had told her about his solitary rant in the grotto.

Her face as he approached suggested she knew nothing of the incident. "Good morning," she said.

"Good morning."

"Another beautiful day. Not as humid as yesterday."

His exact words to Maria in the grotto.

Adam gave a weak smile.

"Are you feeling better?" she inquired.

"I was feeling fine then, and I am now."

"I have a cousin—Alessandra—they took her away for the same thing."

She was clearly going to have her moment of amusement at his expense, whether he liked it or not.

"Talking to sculptures?"

"Paintings."

"Waste of time," said Adam. "They've very little to say for themselves."

She laughed. "Where's Harry?"

"He went into Florence."

"He's a strange young man."

"He had a difficult birth."

"Really?"

"No. But he's always been like that, as long as I can remember. He doesn't care what people think of him. He just, well... is Harry."

"Is he a good sculptor?"

"I don't know. I suppose. They asked him to stay on and teach when he graduated last year."

"He must have something, then."

"Yes, a strange desire to spend the rest of his life welding rusty pieces of metal together."

It was a cheap swipe, revenge for Harry's assault on him the night before, but Signora Docci was amused.

"You remind me of Crispin when he was younger. He also made me laugh."

It was the opportunity he'd been waiting for.

"I wanted to ask you about him."

"About Crispin?"

"It's a personal question."

"Oh."

"Very personal."

She took up her new cane, crossed to one of the benches and lowered herself onto it. "On one condition—I'm allowed to ask you a personal question first." "Okay."

"Are you falling in love with Antonella?"

"No," he replied after a moment. "I think I already have."

"Why?"

"That's two questions."

"I'll allow you two."

"I don't know why. I hardly know her."

"No, you don't."

"It's inexplicable."

"Physical attraction—that's inexplicable."

"It's more than that." Trying to pin it down in words was impossible. "I can see myself being happy with her."

"And if I told you she had made a number of young men quite unhappy?"

"I'd ask myself what your reasons were for saying it." "You don't believe me?"

"I didn't say that. But maybe I'm young enough to make mistakes and still survive."

"Mistakes at any age can color a life forever. Just one mistake." "Emilio, for example?"

There, it was done now, there was no turning back.

"Emilio?" she said warily.

"Was he your son?"

"Of course he was my son."

"I mean . . . with Professor Leonard."

Signora Docci turned and stared off into the distance. When she looked back at him he saw that her eyes were moist with tears. Her voice, however, remained surprisingly level, devoid of emotion.

"I would like you to leave."

"Leave?"

"Today."

"You mean—?"

"Yes. I want you to leave the villa."

Adam could hear the blood beating in his ears. It was about all he could hear.

"I'm sorry if I've offended you."

She looked away. "Just go."

He shaped the snowdrift of papers on the desk in the study into ordered piles. It took three trips to carry everything upstairs to his bedroom. He did so in a daze.

He pulled his suitcases out from under the bed and began to pack. At a certain moment he had to stop. He went to the open window and smoked two cigarettes in quick succession, working through the consequences of his behavior.

The Pensione Amorini was out of the question; too close to home. He'd take a room in Florence, pick up his photos, maybe stay a day or two. Shit. Harry. He'd completely forgotten about Harry. He'd have to wait at the bottom of the driveway for Harry to return from town. What would he tell him? The truth? He couldn't tell him the truth: that they were without a bed that night because he'd felt compelled by a statue of a classical goddess to ask probing and impertinent questions about their hostess's dead son.

His only comfort was that, as explanations went, it wasn't so far removed from some he'd heard from Harry over the years. Harry would probably just shrug and ask him where the nearest bar was.

Maybe he'd go to Venice with Harry. Why not? They'd never been traveling together.

He was still groping for empty consolations when he heard a light knock at the door.

"Yes?"

It was Signora Docci.

She crossed to the armchair near the fireplace and subsided weakly into it.

"Emilio wasn't a mistake," she said. "I knew exactly what I was doing. Even if Crispin didn't." She paused. "We were in love. I can still feel the force of it. It was almost violent. What I did . . . what I allowed to happen . . . it made sense at the time, complete sense, in the way that things do to the young. And I was very young—your age. I don't expect you to understand, but Emilio was a gift to myself because I couldn't be with Crispin."

"Why not?"

"Money of course. He didn't have any, and Benedetto's family did. A lot. The estate was in trouble at the time. My father felt bad, I know—he was very fond of Crispin—but he would not allow us to be together." She lowered her eyes. "Benedetto was a good man. I have not had a bad life."

"Did he know?"

"No one did, not even Crispin. I never told him."

"You never told him?"

She hesitated. "I think it would have destroyed him. I had just got married when . . . well, when it happened. He was very upset. Ashamed. He liked Benedetto a lot. When Emilio was killed, I wrote him a letter. I tore it up. What good would it have done?"

She drew a long breath. "There, now you know, you have your answer."

Adam could think of nothing to say.

"How did you guess?" she asked.

He told her about the family photo in the album and about Gregor Mendel and his gene theory of earlobes.

She nodded, impressed. "I didn't know that," she said, "but I'm surprised Benedetto didn't."

"Maybe he did."

"If he did, he never told me."

But maybe he told someone else, Maurizio for example. Maybe Maurizio knew that Emilio was not his true brother.

Signora Docci held out her hand. Adam walked over and took it.

"Don't go," she said. "I would like you to stay."

He should have been relieved—and he was—but there was also a nagging voice in his head telling him to finish packing the suitcases on the bed, to leave Villa Docci far behind him while he still could.

"Are you punishing me now?" she asked, misinterpreting his silence.

"No."

"I'm sorry; I should not have asked you to go away. I was shocked by your question."

"And I shouldn't have asked it."

She took his words as an apology when really they were a reprimand to himself.

Do you have everything you need, Signora?

Yes, thank you, Maria. You don't have to tuck me in, I'm not a child.

You've been crying.

It's nothing. Memories. Sentimentality. And you know how I hate sentimentality. Is Harry back from Florence yet?

Not yet.

I hope he's all right.

I don't think you have to worry about that.

No. He's very eccentric, isn't he?

He's too familiar.

You mean he's not afraid of you.

If you say so, Signora.

Oh I do, Maria, I do. And I think you quite like that.

I've had an idea.

Don't change the subject just when I'm beginning to enjoy myself.

They will both need evening wear for the party.

Harry's staying for the party?

That's what he told me at breakfast.

Oh, you had breakfast together, did you?

I was thinking that I could unpack Emilio's suits.

If the moths haven't had them.

I've checked. They haven't.

The legs will need to be taken up.

Not for Adam. A few centimeters for Harry. I'll see to it.

Yes, do that. Good night, Maria.

Good night, Signora.

Maria ...

Yes, Signora?

It's a good idea.

ADAM WAS AWOKEN BY THE LIGHT, THE ONE THAT LIVED on his bedside table, the one that was now hovering directly over his head.

He twisted away. "Jesus . . ." he mumbled into the pillow. "Yes, it is I, my son." "Fuck off, Harry."

Harry flopped onto the bed. "I'm in love," he announced. "What's his name?"

"Don't mock. She's Finnish." He lit a cigarette.

"Finnish?"

"Swedish-Finnish."

"Swedish-Finnish?"

"Apparently there are lots of them in Finland: Swedish Finns."

"Oh, for God's sake, Harry."

"What?"

"Was she related to the Swiss girl in Milan by any chance?" "She wasn't after my money."

"My money."

"Although I did buy her dinner."

"Oh, that's what's on my jacket."

"She was very grateful," said Harry, blowing a perfect smoke ring into the air.

Adam checked his watch—almost two in the morning—and resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn't be going back to sleep any time soon.

"And what does she do, this Swedish Finn?"

"Pretty much anything you ask her to."

For much of the following day the back of the villa was crawling with men. Electricians laid a giant spider's web of cables as discreetly as possible; an impressive canopy was erected on the lower terrace near the stand of umbrella pines; smaller tents sprang up elsewhere. Maurizio and his wife, Chiara, had driven up from Florence. They spent much of their time in the company of Signora Docci, deep in discussion with caterers, florists and other official-looking types.

The sound of raised voices would carry into the study from time to time, whenever Signora Docci and Maurizio crossed swords over some detail, which was often, with Chiara doing her best to mediate. At a certain point, Chiara had had enough. Adam knew this because she said as much when she appeared in the study and monopolized an hour of his time. Whatever suspicions he might have harbored about her husband, he liked Chiara. She was warm, frank and irreverent.

"Every year they argue," she said, lighting her first of many cigarettes. "Why, I don't know. Everyone will come, everyone will get drunk, and then everyone will go home. Men will meet the lovers of their wives and not know it; women will meet the lovers of their husbands and know it immediately. And lots of people will find new lovers."

"Sounds like a romantic affair."

"You are young, not a man still."

"Not yet a man," said Adam, correcting her English. "Or not a man yet."

"Exactly. Not a man yet. You believe yet."

"You still believe."

She gave a dismissive sweep of her arm. "Ma, questa lingua di barbari mi fa cagare." Which translated as "This barbarian tongue makes me shit."

"What do I believe?" asked Adam, carrying a smile.

"In life. Love."

"How do you know?"

"I see you," she replied, pointing her cigarette at him.

"What do you see?"

"I see a boy like my son, but more intelligent. I see the way you look at Antonella." Adam rolled his eyes in what he hoped was a convincing display of amused forbearance. "Yes, I do. And I see that you are"—she couldn't find the English word—"un osservatore."

"An observer."

"Yes. You watch. And you think. You are always watching. But you are .. . passivo."

"Passive."

"Yes, passive."

"You should meet my ex-girlfriend, you'd have a lot to talk about."

She laughed, a deep and husky laugh. Adam wondered if she was naturally blond. It was hard to tell from her complexion.

"Ah, see," she exclaimed. "You are doing it now."

"What?"

"Watching. What were you thinking?"

"Nothing."

"Liar."

"Okay. I was wondering if your blond hair is natural."

Chiara leaned across the desk and stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. "I could prove it to you," she said, "but I don't know you well enough."

There was something so matter-of-fact in her delivery that it stripped the statement of all flirtation.

This slightly bizarre exchange didn't color the rest of their conversation, even if the image it conjured up never quite left Adam's head. Chiara talked about a trip she had once made to Scotland. She liked the Scottish, she said, they were hill people, like the Italians. Hill Scots people were different. Hills had names, they had stories attached to them. Peaks and passes had been defended, battles had been fought in their valleys. You couldn't ignore hills, they seeped into your marrow, they became part of you.

Adam put forward a corresponding argument for the flat fen- lands of Cambridgeshire, his father's childhood home, but Chiara refused to allow anything to tarnish her theory, tossing his case out of court.

She told him about the rugged countryside near Perugia, where she'd grown up, and where she still had a house. She told him about the other houses they owned, the one in Florence and the one by the sea.

"And how do you feel about moving here?" Adam asked, nudging the conversation his way.

"It is what Maurizio wants, and it is not so far from town."

"You have your doubts?" "I have never felt happy here."

"It's a beautiful place."

"Yes, I know, of course."

"Maybe you'll feel better about it when you've redone the top floor," remarked Adam.

"Maybe."

"Maria says you have plans."

"Of course. It's not natural." Her eyes flicked toward the ceiling. "Do you think it's natural?"

"No."

"It is like . . ."

"What?"

"E come fossesempre vivo." It's like he's still alive. "It is not natural. I don't care what Francesca thinks."

"Apparently it was her husband's wish."

"Pah!"

It was a surprisingly eloquent utterance, as was the gesture that accompanied it—a dismissive flick of the hand.

"Benedetto was obsessed, everyone said it. She said it. Then when he died, she did nothing."

"Maybe he asked her not to."

"That's what she says; before he died he made her promise. But he did not make Maurizio promise."

"Have you ever been up there?"

"Only one time. When it happened."

"You were here when it happened?"

"We all were, in the house by the farm."

They had been celebrating, she explained, a big meal with lots of wine. Maybe a little too much wine, with hindsight—Emilio had a tendency to become belligerent when drunk. They had good cause to be happy, though. The Allies were at the gates of San

Casciano and they'd received word from the German officer in command of the villa that he intended to disregard his orders and pull back to the next German line of defense, just south of Florence.

This wasn't cowardice on his part. He knew that to make a stand at Villa Docci would quite possibly result in the destruction of a building he'd come to love. He was a good man, said Chiara, a very tall and very cultivated man from Hamburg, and it was sad that he hadn't outlived the war. She still remembered the tears in his eyes as he was leaving, when Emilio told him that he would always be a welcome guest in their home once the hostilities were over.

They had survived the German occupation and were all in high spirits when the sound of gunfire shattered the silence of the night. They knew that a small detail of men had been left behind to finalize the withdrawal from the villa, and their first thought was that these soldiers had been surprised by an advance party of Allied troops. On rushing outside, however, they also heard the sounds of music and laughter coming from up at the villa.

It was Emilio's idea to go and investigate: a matter of pride to him. It was chiefly thanks to his subtle diplomacy that Villa Docci and its occupants had come through the various phases of the war unscathed. Despite what people now said—and what she herself had thought at the time—Emilio was never a Fascist, he was a pragmatist. He did whatever was required to protect his family and the estate, happy to don any mask that served this end, regardless of the damage to his reputation.

She had since discovered that on at least two occasions he had used his influence with the Fascist authorities in Florence to protect Maurizio from certain "difficulties"—problems arising from his association with underground socialism.

And just as Emilio had worked those men of importance in Florence, so he had won over the German officer sent to establish a command post at Villa Docci, sitting up late into the night with him, talking about art, literature, science and philosophy. Not a single artwork had been damaged or pillaged, not a single laborer on the estate ill-treated. It had been an entirely painless cohabitation. Then, just as it was drawing to a close, Emilio was presented with the sight of antique furniture—precious family heirlooms— being tossed from the top windows of the villa by a couple of foot soldiers.

Unfortunately, they were not men he knew well; they'd recently been assigned to Villa Docci, plucked from the hordes of German troops retreating northward. Emilio and Maurizio had burst in on the pair as they were hefting yet another piece of furniture toward the window. They were reeling drunk, laughing, and some German song was blaring from the gramophone player. Emilio took in the room—the broken mirrors, the slashed paintings and the bullet- holes in the ceiling frescoes—then he drew his pistol and fired a shot into the gramophone, killing the music. For a few stunned moments the four men in the room just stood there in the deafening silence, a frozen tableau.

Tempers quickly flared. There was much gesticulating and shouting, the words lost on Maurizio, who didn't speak German. The Germans glanced at their own pistols, abandoned nearby. Emilio ordered them to move away from their weapons. And that's when Gaetano the gardener entered the room, drawn to the villa by the rumpus.

Chiara made Adam swear never to repeat this particular detail of the story, the precise and unfortunate timing of Gaetano's arrival, because in many respects poor Gaetano was unwittingly responsible for the death of Emilio.

As Emilio turned instinctively toward the door, one of the Germans snatched up his own pistol and fired twice, hitting Emilio in the chest and the head. He crumpled to the floor, dead. Gaetano dipped back outside the room, but with nowhere to flee, Maurizio found himself staring down the barrel of the German's gun. His life was saved by the other German, who persuaded his companion not to pull the trigger. The two of them then fled.

Chiara saw the room the following day. Emilio's body had been removed, although his blood still stained the floor near the fireplace, where he had fallen. Allied soldiers arrived in the afternoon, but they seemed less concerned with what had happened than in turning up any intelligence left behind by the Germans. As soon as they were gone, Benedetto closed and locked the doors at the head of the staircase. It was a few days before he announced that the rooms would remain just as they were. He gave no explanation and he refused to discuss the matter further. With time, everyone grew to accept this unusual state of affairs. It only became an issue again when, years later, Benedetto himself died and Signora Docci announced her intention to leave the top floor sealed off.

"It is not right," said Chiara, stubbing out her cigarette and getting to her feet. "We have German friends. They will be at the party. It is an insult to them. It is not right. It is the past."

There was more that Adam wanted to ask, but he'd already shown an undue interest in the episode, cajoling her with questions, extracting from her the closest thing to an "official" account of the killing as he was ever likely to get. Somehow he couldn't see Maurizio being quite so forthcoming, not that he would ever have risked approaching him on the subject.

He accompanied Chiara outside onto the terrace, fleeing the fog of smoke that now filled the study. Amazingly, she immediately lit another cigarette before going in search of her husband and her mother-in-law.

Adam stood for a while at the balustrade, going over the conversation in his head, trying to make sense of it. He watched the workmen toiling away on the terraces below, and he saw just the place to call his thoughts to order.

The air in the chapel was surprisingly cool, almost damp. Alone this time, he surveyed the interior with a more critical eye. It was as plain and simple a place of worship as he'd ever been in. There were no false lines or proportions, no signs of excess—no writhing baroque baldachins bolted to the wall, no fussy frescoes or elaborate carvings. It was as if the building itself had shunned these things over the centuries, successive generations of Doccis somehow sensing its dislike of such frivolities.

Standing there, breathing the building in, he was left in no doubt that the same deft hand that had fashioned an imposing villa for Federico Docci had also shaped this little house of God.

He had done some research: Signora Docci had been right; almost nothing was known about the reputed architect of Villa Docci—Fulvio Montalto. He appeared to have been an apprentice to the Renaissance sculptor and architect Niccolo Tribolo. A letter in the Tribolo archives alluded to a meeting between Federico Docci and Fulvio Montalto—the master being absent—at which the plans for a new country residence were discussed. Maybe Tri- bolo had conceived the plans himself but, given his onerous workload at the time—he was overseeing the construction of the Boboli Gardens for Cosimo de' Medici—it seemed more likely that he had simply handed the commission to his young charge. Fulvio Montalto had more than repaid the confidence placed in him, and it was unfortunate that he had then vanished from the map.

Adam found his feet carrying him to the spot near the south wall where Emilio lay. He thought of him there, down in the dank, dark earth. What did a body look like in a coffin after fourteen years? Liquefied? Mummified? Had the walls of the coffin given way? Were his bones already mingling with the rich Tuscan soil?

He dumped himself on a nearby pew, dejected. He knew the reason for his mood; it had begun to settle on him the moment Chiara mentioned Gaetano the gardener's untimely arrival at the villa on the night of Emilio's murder. This one small statement had crushed the seed of Adam's suspicions underfoot.

Everything he'd concocted in his head over the past days sprang from Fausto's claim that Gaetano had been inconsistent, that he'd changed his story about his exact whereabouts at the moment of the killing. Well, of course he had. Who wouldn't have changed his story in his position? His sudden arrival on the top floor had distracted Emilio, enabling the German to lunge for his gun and open fire. Gaetano must have been devastated, Maurizio sympathetic. It was easy to imagine them presenting an altered version of events to the world in order to spare Gaetano's feelings, just as it was easy to imagine local gossipmongers like Fausto latching on to any inconsistencies in Gaetano's account and gleefully misinterpreting them.

It was clear to him now that he had brought a sinister conspiracy into being through a sheer act of will. He'd stretched the facts to fit his case and disregarded those that didn't—crimes he'd often been accused of in the past by Professor Leonard. Standing there before the altar, it also became clear to him why he'd allowed his imagination to run away with him. The memorial garden had denied him any further taste of intrigue, so he'd searched for it elsewhere— he'd manufactured it from his own frustration.

This recognition of his foolhardiness wasn't without its consolations. He was liberated, relieved of duties, no longer required to speculate about who and how and why, endlessly playing out imaginary scenarios in his mind, searching for the worst wherever he turned. He was free to enjoy the company of a man who had shown himself to be nothing but charming and civil.

Harry had always scrubbed up well, which was fortunate, because when Adam went to wake him before lunch he was sprawled facedown on top of the covers, still in his clothes. He was also dribbling. Remarkably, only twenty minutes later he sashayed onto the terrace fresh-faced, clean-shaven and sparkle-eyed. His hair even bore the traces of a halfhearted stab at a side-parting.

He arrived as the rest of them were taking their places at the table on the terrace.

"Hi, hello, I'm Harry." Maurizio and Chiara both seemed a little overwhelmed by the violence of the handshake, Signora Docci not entirely displeased with the kiss he planted on her cheek.

Chiara remarked on their close physical resemblance—the same dark coloring, the same jaw lines, same wide mouths.

"Adam hates it when people say that. He thinks he's better- looking—taller and better-looking."

"He is taller," said Maurizio.

"I slouch."

Harry straightened in his chair to make the point. Maurizio looked skeptical.

"Okay, I also have bandy little legs. But at least they're not skinny. You won't ever catch Adam in a pair of shorts like these."

"I can't deny it," said Adam, "I wouldn't be seen dead in a pair of shorts like those."

The laughter set the tone for the meal. It was a pleasant affair, the conversation tripping along quite merrily, until Signora Docci asked Harry what he had thought of Florence.

"Disappointing."

"Disappointing?"

"If I'm honest."

"Don't feel you have to be," said Adam.

Harry ignored him. "I don't know what I was expecting, something more romantic, I suppose. It's so bloody"—he searched for the word—"masculine."

"Masculine?" From Chiara, this time.

"Big, bold, brash . . . hard. I mean, take that cathedral. . ."

"The Duomo," said Adam tightly, meaning "Shut up right now."

"That's the one. Let's face it, it doesn't exactly have you reaching for a pen to scribble poetry."

Adam noticed that Maurizio was smiling. Signora Docci and Chiara bristled defensively.

"Many poets have written about Il Duomo," said Chiara.

"Short poems, right?"

Maurizio laughed, drawing a sharp look from his mother. "I know what Harry means," he said. "Florence is not like Siena, or Venice, or Padua. It is much more robust. I can imagine being disappointed."

It was unfortunate that Chiara retaliated with mention of Florence's unrivaled artistic heritage, because on that subject Harry showed even less diplomacy. He had found the art a bit of a letdown too.

"Really?" Signora Docci asked incredulously.

"A bit."

This proved to be something of an understatement. In Harry's humble opinion, the Renaissance marked a low point in the history of Western art. As with most of Harry's theories, the originality of the hypothesis coupled with his passionate conviction almost made up for the glaring flaws in his argument.

He didn't deny that the painters and sculptors of the Renaissance had made great leaps in terms of representational realism, but he questioned whether this was progress, whether it made for better art. You could argue—and he did—that medieval art, with its distortions and disproportions and stylizations, was more real because it wasn't trying to trick the eye. Renaissance art, on the other hand, was devotedly illusionistic. In fact, the illusion had almost become an end in itself. The technical prowess of faking a sense of depth on a flat picture plane or rendering a human figure with near-photographic precision sometimes seemed more important to the artists than the subjects themselves, than the higher, sacred purpose their works were intended to serve. With a few notable exceptions, much of what he'd seen in the galleries and museums of Florence had left him cold. One of the exceptions was Michelangelo's statue of David in the Accademia.

That, he had hated.

A towering monument to man's mawkish fascination with himself, a triumph of form over content, style over substance, was how Harry described it. Where was the terror of a young shepherd boy about to take on the enemy's champion in single combat? The only sign of it Harry had been able to detect lay between David's legs. Fear, like cold, could do that to your penis, Harry explained considerately, for the benefit of the ladies. No, the "snake-hipped Narcissus" looked more like "some dim-witted teenager primping himself in front of a mirror before a big night out."

Harry's views sparked a lively debate, just as he'd intended. There weren't many things he enjoyed as much as an intellectual scuffle. Unfortunately, red wine was one of them, and it was flowing freely throughout the main course—a potentially explosive combination.

Adam judged his moment carefully. At the first signs of beady- eyed belligerence, he dragged Harry away on the pretext of showing him the memorial garden.

No one seemed to mind when Harry asked if he could take his glass with him.

Adam experienced none of the usual anticipatory thrill as they made their way down the path into the valley. He had felt defeated by the garden even before the matter of Emilio's death had laid siege to his thoughts. He gave Harry only the barest background, mentioning little more than the fact that Federico Docci had cast his wife as Flora, goddess of flowers.

Harry stopped as they pushed through the gap in the yew hedge, the gloomy tunnel of trees stretching out before them. "Jolly spot," he said.

He didn't speak again until they reached the open ground at the foot of the amphitheater. He looked up at the statue of Flora, the triumphal arch looming on the crest above her, then he turned, taking in the rest of the valley, the trees pressing in on the pasture.

"What are you thinking?" asked Adam.

"It's beautiful. But eerie."

"What else?"

"Is this a test?"

"No."

It wasn't a test, but he did want to see the place through Harry's eyes—afresh, for the first time. Maybe it would throw up something.

"I need help," said Adam.

"From me?"

"I'm that desperate."

Harry read off the inscription on the triumphal arch, pronouncing it incorrectly.

"Fiore," said Adam. "It's Italian for 'flower.' "

"As in Flora."

"Exactly."

"And that's her—the statue?"

"That's the goddess."

"Is it a likeness?"

"There's no way of knowing, there are no portraits of Flora. I think it might be, though." It was a feeling that had crept up on him in the past few days. Her face didn't fit the template of the time. The features didn't quite accord with the bland, polished refinement of the late sixteenth century. The mouth was too strong, the nose too pronounced, the chin too square. She was too real.

They climbed the slope beside the amphitheater, stepping onto the second level. Harry handed Adam his wineglass and lit a cigarette for both of them. He then proceeded to examine the statue from every angle.

"Well, it's not my kind of thing," he said eventually.

"I guessed as much."

"But it does have a certain quality."

"You think?"

"Uh-huh." "What?"

"Well, she's hot."

"Hot?"

"Horny. Look at her."

Harry slid his hand up the statue's leg, just as Antonella had done at their first meeting. This time was different, though; Harry's hand kept going, working its way right up into Flora's groin.

"Yep, she's wet."

"Oh for God's sake, Harry."

"Well, look at her, see how she's twisted that way then back—all coy but not really."

"It's a classic pose."

"Oh, a classic pose," mocked Harry. "All I'm saying is I wouldn't mind being on the receiving end of that look."

Adam glanced up at Flora's face, the slightly pursed lips, her wide-set almond eyes gazing off into the distance. . . .

But where exactly?

Adam's head snapped round, then back to Flora. She was looking down the slope and across the vale toward the wood, with its towering trees and its dense undergrowth of laurel. They presented an impenetrable screen, but he had a pretty good idea of what lay beyond.

"Stay here," he said.

He lost his footing as he hurried down the slope, stumbling badly, painfully. Gathering himself on the level ground, he called up to Harry. "Tell me where she's looking."

"What?"

"Where she's looking. Tell me exactly where she's looking."

He hurried off, hobbling. He had done something to his ankle. It wasn't hurting yet, but he could tell it would be, and soon.

When he reached the tree line, he turned and shouted, "Here?"

Harry gesticulated and yelled back, "Up a bit. Bit more. That's right. No. Back a touch. I don't know. There. Yes. There."

Adam stripped off his shirt and slung it over the nearest branch. Looking deep into the woods, he set his sights on a distant tree in direct line with the statue and his shirt. He kept his eyes tightly fixed on the tree as he pushed his way through the overgrown laurel. It was a struggle, like walking against the current in a lively river.

When he reached the tree, he turned. He could just make out his shirt hanging from the branch.

He had to be exact, which meant removing his trousers and hanging them from a branch. When he slipped his shoes back on he noticed that his ankle had already started to swell.

Singling out another tree that lay along the same axis, he set off through the laurel. The tight-packed bushes clawed at him, grazing his bare skin. Once or twice he received a sharp jab in the thigh or midriff, enough to stop him momentarily in his tracks, but he didn't take his eyes off the tree until he reached it.

Fortunately, he wasn't required to remove his underpants as another marker; the next tree was close enough to the border of the wood for him to judge the rest of the journey by eye.

He turned and gave one final check that he was still on target with Flora's line of sight, and then he stepped into the open.

He was at the northern fringes of the glade of Hyacinth, and there—directly in his path—stood Apollo atop his high, conical mountain, his arm outstretched toward Hyacinth, prostrate on his plinth on the other side of the clearing.

It came to him suddenly, setting his pulse racing.

Apollo was the key that unlocked the mystery.

He closed his eyes and hurried around the garden in his head,

each element of Federico Docci's design unraveling, taking on new meaning, telling another story, one buried just beneath the surface.

A couple of sharp expletives brought him to his senses. It was Harry emerging from the wood, barging through the laurel, holding his wineglass aloft. Impressively, he seemed to have spilled barely a drop.

Harry's gaze roamed the glade before coming to rest on Adam. "Jesus, Adam, look at you, standing there in your underpants and your shoes, all scratched to fuck. Is this where a Cambridge education gets you?"

"You sound like Dad."

"I'm beginning to understand how he feels."

Adam seized Harry and hugged him close. "You're a genius, Harry."

Harry patted his back and said, "There, there, the nice men in the white coats will be here soon."

Adam laughed and released him. "It's not a memorial garden."

"No?"

"Or rather, it is." "Right."

"Only, it isn't."

"Okay, now I'm really quite worried."

"It's both. It's a memorial garden and a confession."

"A confession?"

"To murder. He killed her. Federico killed her."

"Who?"

"Flora."

"Not her—him. Who the fuck is Federico?"

"Her husband. He killed her because she was having an affair."

Harry took a sip of wine and nodded sagely. "Seems a little . . . excessive."

Harry wasn't too happy about being dispatched into the wood to recover Adam's trousers, but he perked up a bit when they arrived back at the amphitheater and Adam pointed out the anagram on the triumphal arch and the nine circles of Dante's Inferno.

Harry was on board, a happy passenger, by the time they reached the grotto. In fact it was here, standing before the story of Daphne and Apollo, that Harry figured out Federico Docci's chosen method of murder: poison.

It took them more than an hour to complete the circuit, hampered by Adam's injured ankle as well as their protracted discussions.

They only left the garden when they were both satisfied that the new hypothesis held.

Nearing the villa, Harry stopped suddenly and turned to Adam. "That's got to be the weirdest thing we've ever done together."

"Weirder than when we nipped over the back wall to spy on Mrs. Rogan?"

"Okay, second weirdest."

Harry managed to make it through to the evening before reneging on his promise not to break the news about the garden.

Maurizio and Chiara were long gone by then, but Antonella had shown up for dinner, arriving directly from work with a leg of cured ham—a gift from her grateful boss, because of the lucrative order they'd just received from one of the American buyers.

Maria sliced ham from the bone and they washed it down with vintage champagne. Cases of the stuff had been delivered that afternoon and it was in need of "testing" before the party, said Signora Docci. Even Maria permitted herself a glass.

Adam raised a toast to Antonella and the fact that her creations would soon be on sale in New York.

"But what if they don't sell?" she asked with a pained expression.

"That's easy," said Harry, "they won't order any more." He then called for another toast. "To Adam. He's also got some good news." "Do I?"

"You know you do."

"Harry—"

"Stop bleating and tell them."

"The garden . . ." guessed Antonella.

"There's more to it than meets the eye," said Harry. "Much more."

Antonella was smiling at Adam. "You solved the rest of it?"

Signora Docci leaned forward in her chair. "The rest of it?"

Antonella turned to her grandmother. "He told me a bit already."

"Traitor."

"I don't share everything with you, Nonna."

"That's clear to me now."

They turned their eyes on Adam, waiting.

"I couldn't have done it without Harry."

"It's true," confirmed Harry, "he couldn't."

Signora Docci raised her hand abruptly. "Don't say. I want to be there when you say. In the garden."

"Nonna, we're about to eat and it's getting dark."

"Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow morning before you go to work."

"How will you get down there?"

Signora Docci slapped the top of her thighs. "On these of course. And I have two strong young men to help me."

"But I want to know now."

"Then you can ask—once I've gone to bed."

But when Signora Docci made her way upstairs after the meal, Antonella didn't ask. She chose to live with the anticipation for a while longer. Harry assured her she wouldn't be disappointed.

The three of them took their glasses and made for the lower terrace. They lay on the grass under the stars and talked about films they had seen, books they had read, life in England, life in Italy, and even—until Adam told Harry to shut up—Crystal Palace Football Club's recent promotion to the newly formed national Division Four.

Adam felt good, stretched out there on the grass, basking in the soft night air and the conversation, the quiet satisfaction of the breakthrough on the memorial garden washing over him. Only now that it was lifted could he appreciate the true load he'd been shouldering since that first visit to the dark valley down the hill. The place had unsettled him immediately, infected him. It had consumed most of his waking hours, and many of his sleeping ones too. Life had gone on, but it had unfolded around him in a half-haze. He had lived it at one remove.

Now that the spell was broken, things were falling back into focus. Even Antonella appeared different: sharper, crisper, more distinct. And more desirable than ever. He wished, a little guiltily, that Harry wasn't there, that he was on his own with her. He even flattered himself that she was thinking the same thing.

It was annoying that she'd arrived by car; it denied him the opportunity of walking her home. He hadn't forgotten that it was while strolling through the garden with her on just such a night that she had kissed him. He could still recall the soft cushion of her full lips against his own, and the way her hand had snaked around his waist and drawn him against her.

He reached for his cigarettes and caught sight once again of the chapel down the end of the terrace, lurking at the periphery of his vision, as it had been all evening. He had managed to put it from his mind before. This time he was less successful. While Harry prattled on to Antonella about the neglected heroines of early blues music, Adam found his thoughts turning to Emilio's bones sunk beneath the flagstone floor. A life cut short by two bullets—one to the chest, one to the head—Chiara had been very specific.

He couldn't help thinking that there was something unnatural about this level of detail. Chiara could only have heard it from Maurizio, but what kind of man would describe his own brother's murder with such clinical precision? And the other details too: the shot fired into the gramophone player, the Germans glancing at their abandoned weapons. It smacked of a piece of theater hatched in the mind of a playwright. Like a bad lie, it was weighed down with unnecessary information.

He had made the same mistake himself the summer before, when, driving too fast, trying to impress his friends, he'd lost control of his mother's car, crumpling the Morris's fender against a tree. He had told his mother that he'd swerved to avoid a springer spaniel in the road. "Welsh or English?" she had inquired with that knowing look of hers.

Then there was Benedetto, Signora Docci's husband. What had induced him to preserve the site of Emilio's slaughter, obliging his family to live with the memory while denying them access to the scene itself? He had consulted no one on the matter, and had clearly felt no need to justify his decision. Even allowing for his grief-stricken state, there remained something uncharacteristic, unkind even, about his behavior. It had the faintly fanatical whiff of an act of penitence, as if he were punishing himself. Or punishing someone else, perhaps?

Maybe Benedetto knew the truth of what happened that night.

It was certainly an explanation. And a good one. Yes. Benedetto had somehow unearthed the truth but he had chosen to keep the discovery to himself. The best he could bring himself to do was close off the top floor, a constant reminder to Maurizio—

Adam caught himself in this act of folly—speculating about the guilt of a man he had already acquitted. Why couldn't he shake off his suspicions? They were still there, like a wind at his back.

"Well?" said Harry.

"What?"

"Off with the fairies, were we? I said what about another bottle?"

Antonella held up her hands in surrender. "Not for me. Any more and I won't get home."

"So stay," said Harry. "The place is a little pokey but I'm sure we can find you a corner to bunk down in."

Antonella smiled. "No, I must go."

"I'll see you to your car."

"Adam will see you to your car, and you will remind him to come back with another bottle of champagne."

Antonella kissed Harry on both cheeks. "Good night, Harry."

The moment they were lost to Harry's view behind a screen of yew, Antonella asked, "Why does he call you Paddler?"

Adam explained that it had been a very young Harry's first stab at his newborn brother's name. Somehow it had lived on over the years, probably because Harry knew that it irritated Adam.

"I like it," said Antonella, hooking her arm through his. It was a simple gesture—intimate and formal at the same time—and it gave Adam the courage to ask the question he had just vowed to himself he wouldn't ask.

"Have you ever been up there?"

"Where?"

He pointed to the top floor of the villa. "There."

"No."

"Aren't you intrigued?"

"Of course I am. But it's not possible."

"What if I asked your grandmother?"

"She would say no."

"How do you know?"

"Because I asked her. It was my eighteenth birthday. I thought it would make a difference. It didn't. I was so angry I almost took the key and did it anyway."

"You know where she keeps the key?"

Antonella drew to a halt. "Why are you so interested?"

"Same as you, I suppose. Curiosity. Morbid curiosity. It must be a weird sight. And it'll be gone soon, gone forever."

"And we'll all be happy when it is."

Her car was parked at the edge of the courtyard.

"Are you okay to drive?"

"I think so."

"Take it slowly."

"I'm trying to," she said, "but it's hard."

He could make out enough of her expression in the moonlight to know that he hadn't misunderstood her meaning. "Then take it quickly."

Her teeth shone pale behind her smile. "Okay."

They kissed more urgently than they had the first time. His hand strayed to her buttocks, his palm drifting over the firm, round contours, absorbing the information and sending it to his brain. She didn't attempt to remove his hand. Quite the opposite. Her fingers pressed into the muscles of his back in encouragement.

When they finally broke off, he said breathlessly, "God, you have a beautiful . . . rear."

"Thank you. So do you."

He held her close and ran his fingers through her long hair.

"When are you leaving?" she asked.

"I don't know. Soon. That's why I didn't want Harry to say anything about the garden. I don't have an excuse to stay around now."

"Were you right? Did something bad happen?"

He hesitated. "Yes."

They kissed again, briefly, and then she got into her car. Peering up at him through the open window, she said, "I'll tell you where the key is if you promise not to get caught."

"It's a promise."

She told him. She also reminded him to grab another bottle of champagne for Harry. Then she fired the engine and pulled away.

It might have been a trick of the shadows, but he could have sworn he caught a flutter of movement behind one of the second- floor windows as the headlights swept the courtyard.

Harry had removed himself to a stone bench during Adam's absence. He was lying on his back, staring at the star-stained sky. Adam popped the cork and filled their glasses.

"Did you kiss her?"

"Yes."

"Bastard. She's too good for you."

"Thanks." "It's true," said Harry. "I mean, you're a bright young boy and everything—" He broke off suddenly, snapping upright and fixing Adam with an intense stare. "My God, you are a bright young boy, aren't you?"

"What?"

"Yes, you are. I mean, I've always known it . . . but do you have any idea what you did today?"

"We did it, Harry."

"Rubbish. You were there, half a step away. You would have figured it out."

Unaccustomed to hearing kind words from Harry, Adam wasn't quite sure how to react.

"The first person in how many years?"

"Three hundred and something."

"I thought it was more."

"We can push it to four if you think it'd make a better story."

Harry laughed. "It's a great story. This is going to change everything."

"Why?"

"Well, you can't go off and sell insurance after this."

"Why not?"

"Why not!? Anyone can sell insurance. How many people can do that?" Harry thrust his hand in the general direction of the memorial garden.

"What if I don't want to do that?"

"You've got to."

"Why?"

"Why!? Because you see things other people don't."

"No, I don't."

"Yes you do. You always have. Even when we were kids. It's true, Paddler. You were always taking things apart, looking at them from the inside out. Mum always says: the only baby she's ever known that tried to smash its rattle open. We still laugh about it."

"Oh, I'm happy for you both."

"You look at things differently, you see things differently."

"Then how come I looked at Flora and I didn't see her? Not really. I saw books."

"So you learned something. You'll be better next time."

"There isn't going to be a next time, Harry."

Harry grew serious, almost aggressive. "Listen to me. It's not like the other night. I'm not talking about your friends, I'm not talking about the last two years of your life—I'm talking about the rest of it."

"I know you are."

"You can't become an insurance man."

"I don't have a choice! Someone's got to, and you're not going to!"

The vehemence of his reply was almost as shocking to him as it was to Harry.

"Jesus, Paddler—"

"It's true. The moment you said no to Dad, it was always going to be me."

Harry placed his palms together. "Listen to me. It's your life, not his. Do you want his life? Well, do you? Living in a place like Purley with a couple of kids? Is that what you want, catching the same bloody train every morning, moaning about rationing, worrying about your pension . . . screwing your secretary because you don't love your wife anymore?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Screwing ... your . . . secretary," said Harry with slow deliberation.

"Dad's not screwing his secretary." "Isn't he?"

"You're drunk."

"I wouldn't be telling you if I wasn't."

Adam eyed his brother for a moment, then laughed. "That's good, Harry. You're still good, I'll give you that." He'd fallen for enough of these in the past to know what was coming next.

"On Mum's life," said Harry solemnly.

Adam sobered up fast.

"His secretary ...?"

"Vanessaaaaa."

Vanessa was very smart, very well spoken. Her father was a high-ranking civil servant, and she knew all the dates in the social calendar by heart.

"The one who likes operaaaaa. You can just see it, can't you? Dad snoring his way through Wagner, then running for the last train home."

"How do you know?"

"Mum."

"She told you?"

"I asked her. You must have noticed something—the house . . . her hair . . . shoes . . . she's let things go."

Had he really been that blind?

"She was asking to be asked."

Adam dumped himself dejectedly on the bench beside his brother.

"They've talked about it," said Harry. "He doesn't know what he wants to do."

"Did he tell her, or did she find out?"

Somehow it seemed important to know.

"What do you think?"

"Bastard." "You in thirty years if you're not careful. He made the wrong choice too. Remember how he used to make us laugh? He was a funny man once. How long since he was funny? How long since Mum drew a happy breath?"

Adam lit a cigarette, then turned to Harry. "The Giant Rat of Sumatra?"

"Like I said, you're a bright young boy."

IT WASN'T SURPRISING THAT HE AWOKE SNARLED IN THE sheet. What surprised him was the fact that he'd managed to sleep at all. At some ungodly hour of the night he'd given up even trying to, surrendering to the turmoil in his head.

He had never glorified his parents' relationship, never held it up to others or himself as a model marriage. But he had always expected it to be there, them to be there, together. It was one of those things you took for granted, like the passing of the seasons. Harry was of the opinion that it was something they had to work out for themselves. Adam's instinct was to head straight home and help in whatever way he could.

A few hours of welcome oblivion had taken the edge off his panic. It also helped that he had something else to think about from the moment he swung his legs off the bed.

He was the last to appear at breakfast. Even Antonella was already there. She was as eager as Signora Docci to get going immediately, although they did allow him to throw back a small cup of dense black coffee first.

His sprained ankle had ballooned grotesquely overnight, and it screamed in protest during the long slow walk down from the villa. His mind, however, was on other things, toying with how best to reveal the story. In the end he just told it the way it was, taking each component of the garden in turn and exposing both its faces.

Signora Docci fell silent when Adam pointed out the anagram of inferno on the triumphal arch, and she barely spoke from that moment on.

Dante's Divine Comedy was the key text, he explained, not Ovid's Metamorphoses, with its tales of gods and goddesses and all their shenanigans. Ovid was a red herring. He was to be ignored.

The story of Daphne and Apollo in the grotto was little more than a front, a cloak, a disguise. The sculptural arrangement needed to be looked at as a snapshot of a purely human drama: a young couple frolicking merrily while an older gentleman brooded nearby. It had nothing to do with the ancient myth it purported to represent. It was a depiction of Flora and her lover and a disconsolate Federico Docci.

Harry had provided the breakthrough with his throwaway comment about the look on Flora's face. From her perch on the second level of the amphitheater, the adulterous wife was staring longingly at the distant figure of Apollo in the glade of Hyacinth. Apollo's unmasking as Flora's lover was the key that unlocked the mystery, exposing the whole masquerade. There was another clue to the importance of the sun god in Federico Docci's hidden design: a literary clue buried in the text of The Divine Comedy, when, just after he has ascended into Paradise, Dante calls on Apollo for inspiration, to help him in the final stages of his journey.

What else did the grotto reveal once its characters had been exposed as the three parties to a Renaissance love triangle? There was Federico Docci—in the guise of Peneus—clutching an urn, filling the marble trough with water, which then overflowed into the gaping mouth of Flora, her face set in relief in the floor—no longer a river god providing sustenance to the goddess of flowers, but Federico giving his wife something to drink. What, though? If that symbol of purity, the unicorn bent over the trough, had never possessed its horn, as the sixteenth-century drawing suggested, then whatever it was, it was undrinkable.

"Poison . . ." said Signora Docci quietly.

"I think so."

"But you can't be sure."

"There's another clue. We'll come to it."

From the grotto they traveled clockwise around the circuit, stopping at the glade of Adonis, with its sculpture of Venus grieving over her dead love. There was no need to explain the arrangement to Signora Docci and Antonella now that the central conceit of Federico's deception had been laid bare. Ignoring the "official" identities of the characters on show, it was a representation of Flora grieving over her dead lover.

"You think Federico killed him?" asked Antonella.

"It looks that way. In the myth, Adonis was killed by a wild boar."

"Our coat of arms . . ." muttered Signora Docci.

"Exactly."

Signora Docci appeared a little overwhelmed by the revelation. She said nothing more, but she did pay Adam a heartfelt compliment with her eyes.

At the foot of the garden stood the Temple of Echo, out the front of which lay Narcissus, peering into the octagonal pool: two youngsters, their love destined to fail, death their reward. If the correspondence was to be believed, Flora—like Echo—had died a slow and lingering death. That poison had been the cause of it was supported by the inscription running around the architrave beneath the dome: The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows. The words were those of Socrates, spoken shortly before he took his own life, poisoning himself with hemlock.

The glade of Hyacinth, the final element in the garden, mirrored the glade of Adonis on the other side of the valley. But whereas the first glade they had visited portrayed the death of Flora's lover, this one told the death of Flora herself.

In many ways it was the most interesting part of Federico Docci's carefully constructed program. It revealed the most about the man behind the murders, offering insights into his thinking. Because Federico Docci had found himself faced with a problem.

It was easy to imagine his predicament.

The disguise is perfect. The garden he has laid out in loving memory of his wife—the garden he wishes the world to take at face value—is thematically flawless. Flora is made to live again as Flora goddess of flowers. He sets her at the head of the garden, a queen surveying her subjects—Adonis, Narcissus, Hyacinth— each of whose tragic death was marked by the genesis of a flower. Tragedy, Survival, Renewal, Metamorphosis, Death and Resurrection: the themes weave together effortlessly. Only the story of Hyacinth presents a problem.

It is ideal for his purposes, and certainly too good to consider abandoning. Zephyrus, the west wind, driven mad by his jealousy of Apollo, kills the object of their mutual affections. It's perfect, except for the fact that Hyacinth was a Spartan prince, not a princess. There is a problem with the gender. Federico gets round it by placing Hyacinth face down in the dirt, his/her hair covering his/her face, his/her body draped in a bulky robe.

It's a cheat, not up to his usual high standards, and Federico knows it. He doesn't mind too much, though, because it obliges him to leave behind a clue—the unusual posing of Hyacinth—and he has to leave at least one clear clue in each section of the garden. That's obviously the challenge he has set himself. He wants people to know the truth, but only once there's little risk to himself. That is surely the reason he waits almost thirty years, till his own life has all but run its course, before laying out the garden.

There was nothing more for Adam to say, so he fell silent. Harry slung an arm around his shoulder and grinned at the ladies.

"Not bad, eh? For a young'un."

"No, not bad at all."

Antonella was far more fulsome in her praise, proposing a celebratory dinner that evening in honor of Adam's remarkable discovery.

Adam and Harry assisted a flagging Signora Docci back to the amphitheater, each of them gripping a bony elbow, Antonella bringing up the rear. They speculated about the identity of Flora's lover, concluding that it must surely have been one of the many artists and writers who attended Federico's cultural gatherings at Villa Docci. A younger man, no doubt, more Flora's age than her husband's. Or why not a woman? This was wishful thinking on Harry's part, though not entirely misguided. Tullia d'Aragona, the Roman poetess and courtesan, had disappeared abruptly from the Florentine scene in 1548—the year of Flora's death. Maybe there was a connection, after all. Adam kept these musings to himself.

Arriving at the amphitheater, Signora Docci asked to rest awhile on the stone bench. She also asked to be left alone.

From a distance they saw her gazing up at Flora, dabbing at her eyes with the back of her hand every so often.

It was ten minutes or so before she called for Adam to join her.

"Are you okay?" he asked, setting himself down beside her.

"You don't know what you've done."

"What have I done?"

"Something extraordinary. Crispin will be proud of you. I'm proud of you." She patted him on the knee. "At my age you don't expect to learn anything new."

Harry seized the opportunity of a lift with Antonella to make another foray into Florence, despite Adam's warning that he was taking his life in his hands by climbing into a car with her. As they pulled away, he made a sign of the cross, blessing the vehicle.

Returning inside, Signora Docci was nowhere to be found. He called her name. "In here," came the dim and distant reply.

She was in the study, standing to the left of the fireplace, examining the small portrait of her ancestor, Federico Docci.

"Please, call me Francesca."

"Francesca," he said, trying it on for size.

"I insist."

"It doesn't sound right."

"It never did. I was never a Francesca. I always thought of myself as a Teresa."

"A little too saintly, maybe."

For a moment he thought he had gone too far, but her face creased into a smile. "Oh dear, you really do know far too much about me, don't you?"

She turned back to the portrait.

"I'm thinking about burning it."

"But you won't."

She shook her head. "It explains a lot in his expression, don't you think?"

"I think we see what we want to see."

"Goodness me," she said, "already talking like a wise old professor."

Adam looked suitably chastened.

"I would like to go to the chapel," she announced. "Do you mind helping me?"

There were gardeners at work on the terraces, trimming hedges, raking gravel and sprucing up the borders for the party. Signora Docci greeted them but didn't stop to talk.

"Are you religious?" she asked as they approached the chapel.

"No."

"Not even as a child?"

"I enjoyed the stories."

He was dreading a metaphysical debate. It didn't happen.

"Yes, they're good stories," she replied simply.

She crossed herself on entering the building and made her way to the altar, the tap of her cane echoing around the interior. She must have sensed his hesitation, because without turning she said, "I doubt he'll strike you down in his own house."

He joined her at the altar, where she removed a candle from her pocket—a votive candle in a red glass jar. He offered her his lighter to save her fiddling with the box of matches.

"Thank you."

She lit the candle and placed it in front of the triptych.

"Maybe now she can rest in peace."

Her words caught him off-guard. Had she felt the same unnerving presence?

"No one knows exactly where she's buried, do they?" he said.

"When we buried Emilio we found some bones, but that means nothing."

"Why was he buried here?"

"Emilio?"

"I mean, how many Doccis are?"

"Most of us are in the cemetery at San Casciano. There is a place for me there, next to Benedetto." She paused. "It was Benedetto's idea. He insisted. He wouldn't even discuss it. He wanted Emilio here."

She took a few steps and stood over the remains of her dead son.

"Old men make the wars, but they send young men to fight the battles. It doesn't seem fair. They should go themselves." She smiled wistfully at the thought. "I wonder how many wars there would be if it worked that way." Only now did she look up at him. "All those boys. Parents should not have to see their children die before them. It's not easy to live with. Benedetto couldn't. The moment it happened he changed. I thought he was losing his mind. He would not even allow Emilio to be buried with the bullets that killed him. They were removed." She turned toward the wall. "They are there, behind the plaque, with Emilio's gun."

"Really?"

"No one else knows that. Only me. And now you."

He tried to push the thoughts away, but they kept coming at him, buffeting him. There were only two plausible explanations for Benedetto's strange behavior regarding the bullets and the gun. He already knew what one of them was: the poor man really had lost his marbles. The second explanation required testing, and that meant gaining access to the top floor, it meant getting his hands on the key in the bureau in Signora Docci's bedroom.

Annoyingly, she took to her room the moment they returned from the chapel, pleading exhaustion and requesting that Maria serve her lunch in the upstairs loggia. Adam shook off his frustration. If he had to wait awhile longer for an opportunity, so be it. There was another matter he had to deal with anyway—after he had phoned home.

The moment his mother's voice came on the line he seemed to lose all power of reason and speech. This wasn't entirely due to her irritating habit of answering the phone with the words—

"The Strickland residence."

"Mum, it's me."

"Adam, darling. How are you?"

How could she muster such heartfelt warmth and enthusiasm in her condition?

"Fine. Good. Yeah."

He wanted to tell her that he'd been blind, insensitive, self- absorbed. He wanted to say that he knew what she must be going through. He wanted to reassure her that it would all be all right in the end, whatever happened, that even if Dad left her she would always have him and Harry and a life worth living.

As it was, they talked chiefly about the weather and his laundry arrangements in Italy. When she raised the subject of his work on the garden, he brushed the question aside, not wanting to diminish her story with an account of his own small triumph.

After ten minutes or so, it was patently clear to him that he was never going to raise the matter of his father's infidelity. How could he? It wasn't a language they had ever spoken. They both lacked the vocabulary.

"Mum, I have to go."

"Of course you do. Make sure you give Signora Docci something for this phone call. You won't forget, will you?"

"Mum . . ."

"Yes, darling?"

"I love you, Mum."

"Gracious me," she chuckled, "you must be having a terrible time."

"I'll see you next week."

"What day did you say again?"

"I didn't. I'll call and let you know. 'Bye, Mum."

"I'll send your love to your father."

"Yes, do that."

"Goodbye, darling. And try to keep Harry out of trouble."

He replaced the receiver on its cradle and made straight for the kitchen. He told Maria that he wouldn't be requiring lunch today; he was going for a bike ride.

There were two men zealously tucking into bowls of pasta on the terrace in front of the Pensione Amorini—stonemasons from the look of them, powdered white from top to toe. Signora Fanelli must have insisted they eat outside regardless of the heat.

She was inside, chatting to the only other customer, an overweight man sporting a dark suit and a loud necktie. She turned as Adam entered, a flicker of alarm in her eyes. She recovered quickly, though, smiling warmly as she wandered over to greet him.

"How are you?"

"Good."

"How's life at the villa?"

"Good."

"Do you want to eat?"

"No thanks."

"Something to drink, then? A beer?"

"Why not?"

His arrival had disconcerted her. Maybe she didn't want to be reminded of their tryst. Or worse still, maybe she thought he had dropped by in the hope of a replay upstairs. Before he could set her mind at rest, she was gone, heading for the kitchen.

She really was very beautiful, more beautiful than he remembered, and he wondered, not for the first time, what on earth had induced her to share herself with him.

He took a sip of beer and pressed the chill glass to his cheek. It was good to get out, away from Villa Docci, to slip its grip for a while. That's what he told himself. He knew in his bones he'd done no such thing.

Villa Docci had not released him. If it had, he'd be wandering the streets of Florence right now, dipping into churches, galleries and museums with Harry. Why was Harry the one down there doing it? The Renaissance was his thing, not Harry's. All that seminal art right on his doorstep, destined to go unseen by him, masterpieces callously ignored. And in favor of what, exactly?

He tried not to think too hard about why he had allowed himself to be drawn back into the dark abyss of his suspicions. The reasons flew in the face of common sense, they violated the laws of logic by which he liked to think he operated. This was uncharted territory for him, instinct his only guide.

It occurred to him that he wouldn't be sitting there on a bar stool in the Pensione Amorini if that same instinct hadn't served him so well in the memorial garden. As ever, all things sprang from and returned to the garden.

Signora Fanelli served the lone gentleman his food, then joined Adam at the counter. Was it significant that she had tied up her hair while in the kitchen?

"It's nice to see you."

"I came to say goodbye. I'm leaving soon."

"Before the party?" she asked.

"You know about the party?"

"Everyone does. The children here always go and watch—from a distance, of course. I used to when I was young."

"I also want to say goodbye to Fausto, but I don't know where he lives."

She drew him a map on a paper napkin. He'd forgotten that she was left-handed.

When he pulled some coins from his pocket to pay for the beer, she said, "Don't be silly, I don't want your money."

She accompanied him outside to his bicycle. "You won't tell him about us, will you? Fausto, I mean."

"Don't worry, I'm too embarrassed."

She smiled apologetically. "I didn't mean that. But you won't, will you?"

"No."

She cast a fleeting look at the stonemasons before kissing him on both cheeks.

"Goodbye, Adam."

"Goodbye."

"Hello."

Fausto looked up, squinting. "You?" "Me."

Fausto was mixing mortar in an old tin pail. He was stripped to the waist, revealing a wire-and-whipcord body. Wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm, he rose to his feet.

"You like it?" He nodded at the low stone, tile-roofed structure he was working on. The building itself was finished; he was erecting the walls of a small yard out front.

"For the pig?"

"For a whole family of little pigs."

"It's beautiful." Adam looked around him. "It's all beautiful."

He wasn't being polite. The modest farmhouse was set among a run of terraces carved out of the wooded hillside just south of San Casciano. It was an isolated spot, accessed by a precipitous dirt track barely passable on foot, which probably accounted for the old U.S. Army jeep parked beside the farmhouse.

"Yes, it's not bad. Are you thirsty?"

"Yes."

"Go and get a couple of beers from the fridge. I have to do this now or the mortar will set."

As with Antonella's farmhouse, the living accommodation was on the first floor. Unlike Antonella's place, Fausto's home was stuffed to bursting with furniture, pictures, books and other curiosities. In the middle of the kitchen table was an upturned German helmet, painted pink and doubling as a flowerpot, a bushy fern sprouting from it. The ramshackle shelves in one corner of the room were almost exclusively given over to books on warfare and historic battles. Knowing that to delay anymore would mean he'd been snooping, he grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge and headed back outside.

As soon as Fausto was done slapping the mortar around a few more blocks of stone, he took Adam on a tour. They inspected the vines, the olive trees, the orchard, the maize and the sunflowers.

There was also an extensive vegetable patch, as well as a large jerry-built coop with chickens busy turning table scraps into eggs. The crops were clearly suffering from the lack of rain, but it didn't seem to bother Fausto. "Everything a man needs," he declared with pride. "Except a woman to share it with."

They drank the next two beers in the shade of a vine-threaded pergola beside the house. Adam asked about the books on battles heaped up on the shelves in the corner of the kitchen.

"I'm interested, it's true. So much of who we are, what we are, comes down to a bunch of men fighting in a field."

Adam smiled. He hadn't thought of it in those terms before.

"In twelve sixty," said Fausto, "Florence and Siena went to war. September third. It was a Saturday."

Adam's Italian wasn't up to catching all of the details, but as he understood it, this was how things unfolded. Siena was already a divided city, and the Florentines weren't fools. They waited till the different factions were at each others' throats before sending in their messengers, two horsemen carrying with them a simple yet stark ultimatum: If the Republic of Siena didn't surrender at once to Florence, then the city would be razed to the ground. It wasn't an idle threat. The Florentine army massing to the east was more than capable of following it through.

The one thing the Florentines hadn't banked on was the Sienese burying their differences overnight. Sworn enemies gathered before the cathedral that same evening and greeted each other like brothers. Then they called on the Virgin Mary to help them in the forthcoming battle.

The two armies clashed the following day at Montaperti. According to eyewitness accounts, there was enough blood flowing at one point to drive four watermills. By far the greater part of it was Florentine blood. That field near Montaperti was home to a massacre, and it was years before any animals ever ventured near it.

"Imagine it," said Fausto. "The next day was a Sunday. That's when the Sienese army returned. They dragged the Florentine banner through the streets behind an ass. You think those bastard Sienese have forgotten that day? Of course they haven't. It's what they teach their children in school. It's in their eyes every time we play them at football."

Fausto paused to light a cigarette.

"People think of Italy as an old country. It isn't. We're young, younger than the United States. We only united in 1870, not even a hundred years ago. We're not a country yet, and we won't be for a while. These things take a long time. No, those bastard Sienese haven't forgotten Montaperti. It's part of who they are. In the same way Hastings is part of who you English are. That's one of the great battles. You know why? Because a bunch of men fighting in that one field changed the whole course of your country's history."

Fausto took a slug of beer.

"But you didn't come here to talk about this stuff. Am I wrong?"

"No."

"So tell me."

"I have a question. It's about Gaetano."

"Gaetano?"

"The gardener who left last year."

"I know who Gaetano is."

"Where is he now?"

"Viareggio. By the sea. He owns a bar there, a fancy place—La Capannina."

"You've been there?"

Fausto spread his arms to indicate his disheveled appearance. "What do you think?"

"How much does a fancy bar in Viareggio cost?"

"Apparently he inherited some money from his family down south." There was a note of skepticism in his voice.

"You don't believe it?"

"How do I know? More to the point, what do you care?"

Adam gathered himself, then took the plunge. "The last time I saw you, you said Gaetano changed his story about what happened the night Emilio died."

"Was I drunk?"

"You lied?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Just tell me what you meant."

Fausto sighed. "Look, it was something Gaetano's uncle told my father the next day."

"What?"

"He said he was almost run down by the Germans when they were leaving."

"Gaetano said that?"

"To his uncle."

Adam digested this news. "He turned up later. He wasn't there when it happened."

"It was a long time ago. Who knows what really happened? Who cares?"

"I do."

Fausto leaned forward in his chair. "Listen to me. The Doccis' business is their own. Who are you? You've been here—what—a week? You didn't know them before and you'll probably never see them again. Just leave it alone."

"How do you know I didn't know them before?" "What?"

"How do you know I didn't know the Doccis before?"

"You said."

"No I didn't."

"Yes you did."

"No."

"Porca l'oca! Look at you. Look at you! I'd chuck a bucket of water over you if the well wasn't dry. I warned you about that place. Didn't I warn you? Pull yourself together, this isn't normal behavior, you're acting like a crazy man. Just leave it alone."

Adam wanted to tell him that he'd tried to leave it alone—more than once—but he couldn't. He no longer had any choice in the matter.

"Did Maurizio kill Emilio?" he asked bluntly.

"I'm not going to answer that."

"Why not?"

"Because how the hell should I know?"

"But you think it's possible . . ."

"Anything's possible."

"Well, I think he did it."

"What if he did?"

"I think I can prove it."

"What if you can?"

"You don't believe in justice?"

Fausto gave a short, despairing laugh. "This is madness. You should go now. I'm serious. Go. Leave."

Fausto got to his feet to press home his point. He made no move to shake Adam's hand, so Adam turned and left.

Signora, are you awake?

Yes.

Shall I open the shutters?

Thank you, Maria.

Did you manage to sleep?

Not much.

Antonella called. She has bought fish for dinner this evening.

What kind of fish?

Does it matter? She knows I don't like cooking fish.

I'm sure she didn't do it to annoy you.

I'll mess it up. I always mess it up.

Maria, I've never known you to mess anything up.

Except the wild boar in chocolate sauce.

Yes, that was truly terrible. It was also twenty years ago.

Twenty-three.

It's good to see you've put it behind you.

Maurizio and Chiara have arrived.

Did they come by the villa?

No, I saw their car over at the farm.

We should invite them to dinner.

Antonella already has.

Oh, has she?

I like Chiara.

So do I, Maria. Where's Adam?

He went for a bike ride.

In this heat?

I was wrong about him.

Don't go soft on me now.

Signora?

In all the years we've known each other, I've never once heard you admit to being wrong about anything.

He's no fool.

No. But he's young, and therefore naive.

He's twenty-two next month.

He told you?

I saw his passport.

I'm not sure it's acceptable to go rifling through the guests' belongings.

I was cleaning his room. It was on the sideboard.

Then you're forgiven.

I think I'll bake it.

Excuse me?

The fish, Signora.

DINNER WAS A TRYING AFFAIR.

It didn't help that the meal was billed as being in his honor. He had always struggled with that kind of thing. Some children glowed with self-importance at their birthday parties; others blushed, even when they managed to blow all the candles out.

It didn't help that he was seated directly opposite Maurizio down one end of the table. It didn't help that Harry and Antonella had returned from Florence the worse side of two cocktails each, giggling like love-struck teenagers. And it didn't help that he now knew for certain that someone—someone at the table, or the someone serving them—had been going through his papers in the study.

He knew, because he had laid a trap, stacking his notebooks in an apparently careless (yet very particular) fashion, laying his ballpoint pen on a pile of loose papers so that its tip pointed directly to the upper left-hand corner of the top sheet. Simple yet effective. The idea of lacing the bait with something had only occurred to him at the last moment. He had slipped a sheet among the papers.

On it was written in big bold capitals: i know you're looking through my things.

Whoever it was had done a good job of covering their tracks. Not good enough, though. The notebooks were too neatly stacked, the pen slightly out of alignment. Fortunately, Antonella was beyond suspicion. He had set the trap after her departure for Florence with Harry, and it had been sprung before their return.

The ruse with the sheet of paper served him less well than he thought it might. In fact, about the only thing he learned was that it's impossible to second-guess someone who knows you're trying to second-guess them. He saw signs of guilt wherever he turned.

Maurizio and Chiara had moved into the house above the farmyard earlier in the day. They wanted to be around to help with the final preparations for the party, just two days off now. In an uncharacteristic display of selflessness—brought on, no doubt, by the brace of gin fizzes—Harry offered to vacate his room so that they could sleep in the villa.

Signora Docci sweetly acknowledged his noble gesture, while pointing out the obvious: that a lack of bedrooms was rarely a pressing concern at Villa Docci. No, it was a question of principle. "It's their farmhouse, and they hardly ever use it. It's good for them to use it.

"My mother's right. It's good for us to use it," said Maurizio tightly.

"It'll be one of their last opportunities."

Everyone looked to Signora Docci. She savored the moment before continuing.

"I plan to be living there myself next month."

"Mamma . . . ?" frowned Maurizio.

"That's right, I'm moving out of the villa. And you and Chiara are moving in, I hope."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. Next month." She lowered her eyes modestly and said in Italian, "I'm sorry if it's taken longer than you thought."

Adam despised what he saw in Maurizio's face: the spark of deep satisfaction behind the eyes, the struggle not to smile. He would soon be master of Villa Docci. The long years of waiting were over. Finally, there was a concrete, tangible purpose to his crime.

Maurizio must have sensed Adam studying him, because he shot a quick glance across the table and the look vanished from his face. It was the same sudden composure he had brought to bear in the memorial garden, when Adam had sprung on him the subject of fratricide in Dante's Inferno.

The mask was not allowed to slip again for the remainder of the meal. Even when it came time for Adam to detail his discoveries for Maurizio and Chiara's benefit, Maurizio's expression never faltered. He was not shaken by all the talk of murder and intrigue. Quite the reverse. He embraced it, heaping praise on Adam for his achievements and firing off questions to keep the discussion alive.

Adam was beginning to doubt the picture of the man he had painted for himself when he witnessed the one other wobble in Maurizio's performance. It occurred toward the end of the evening, just before Antonella left.

Signora Docci mooted the theory that Federico's murder of Flora and her lover, enshrined in the garden, had acted as some kind of curse on the family, coloring the fortunes of the villa's occupants, consigning the Doccis to centuries of ill luck, violence and tragedy.

Her words cast a momentary pall over Maurizio's features, a sadness tinged with a telling self-pity. "That's very interesting," he said.

Chiara threw her husband a curious look and said in Italian, "Since when are you superstitious?"

Since the moment it exonerated him of his own crime, thought Adam; since the moment it allowed him to view himself as a victim of some grander design set in motion by a murderous ancestor. Maurizio had leapt too readily at his mother's wild theory. That had been his mistake, and it shored up Adam's flagging suspicions.

Only as Antonella was leaving did Adam realize he'd paid her hardly any attention. She'd gone to a lot of effort to make the meal a special occasion, buying two magnificent fish, which Maria had cooked to perfection, and he had barely acknowledged the fact. Worst of all, he wouldn't be seeing her again until the party. No one would. Something had come up at work. She hoped to get away early on Friday if at all possible, but she couldn't promise she'd appear much before the first guests arrived. These were about her last words before she disappeared into the night.

Maurizio and Chiara followed suit soon after. Adam noted that they stopped and kissed each other as they made their way across the parterre. When Signora Docci announced that she too was ready for bed, Harry told her to wait a moment, he had something for her. He disappeared inside the villa, promptly returning with his scuffed leather shoulder bag. From it he produced something wrapped in a paint-bespattered piece of cloth. He laid the object carefully, almost reverently, on the table in front of him. It was about a foot long, not too thick—like a slender log.

"I was going to give it to Adam. But it's for you, a thank you. If you don't like it, give it to Adam. And if he doesn't like it. . . well, I'll shoot myself." He let out a nervous laugh.

That's when Adam realized that one of Harry's own creations lay swaddled in the old rag. Maybe he should have guessed sooner, but he'd never seen anything by Harry on this scale. All the other works had been at least three or four times the size, considerably more in the case of the "giant mechanical penis."

This moniker, coined in relative innocence by Adam, had almost brought the two of them to blows right there in the Bath Academy sculpture studio at Corsham during Adam's one and only visit. Welded together from "recovered pieces"—Harry's fancy phrase for scrap metal—the work in question was part building, part machine, and, in Adam's firm opinion, blatantly phallic.

For a horrible moment it occurred to Adam that the thing on the table, the thing about to be unveiled by Harry and handed to Signora Docci, might actually be a maquette for the same sculpture, a preparatory "sketch" in miniature.

It wasn't. It was the first figurative piece by Harry that Adam had ever seen. And it was good. He knew it was good the moment he set eyes on it, because his very first thought was that it had almost been his, and now it never would be, not unless Signora Docci didn't like it. But he could see in her eyes that she did.

It was a creature, almost a man, but not quite. Mounted on a slate base, it had long spindly legs of welded steel that climbed to a thick barrel chest, redolent of an insect's thorax. There was no skin as such, just an irregular mesh of slender steel struts, each no thicker than a matchstick, which reached to the heart of the creature, leaving you in no doubt that it had been built from the inside out. The head consisted of two shapeless steel protrusions. The arms, like the legs, were skeletally thin, and were raised above this stumpy nonhead and crossed at the wrists.

Somehow, the little insect-man was both robust and delicate, noble yet fragile, brave yet cowardly.

"It's made of mild steel. Do you like it?" Harry asked tentatively.

"Am I allowed to like him?" replied Signora Docci. "I want to, but I'm not sure he wants me to."

Harry beamed, happy with her reply. His head crept around to Adam.

"Well done."

"Really?"

"Harry . . . really."

Signora Docci held the sculpture up to the candlelight. "He's so sure of himself but so frightened." She paused. "I see Mussolini at the end, before they strung him up with piano wire in Piazzale Loreto."

"That's good," said Harry.

"Maybe it's the way the arms are crossed above the head, but I see you and me in the Anderson shelter down the end of the garden in Kennington when the bombs were coming down."

"That's good too," said Harry.

"Thank you," said Signora Docci. "I love him and I will live with him for the rest of my life."

Before carrying her prize off to bed with her, she told them that they needn't worry about what to wear to the party; something had been sorted out for them. She also told them that she'd be heading down into Florence in the morning with Maria for the final fitting of her dress. They both declined the offer of a lift, though for different reasons.

Adam knew that Maurizio and Chiara also planned to be away in the morning—they were dropping in on some friends who lived to the south. The timing was good. An opportunity for a snoop around the top floor of the villa was shaping up nicely.

"What's the matter?" asked Harry, the moment they found themselves alone together.

"Nothing's the matter." "Come on . . ."

"I wasn't lying, Harry, I love the sculpture."

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

"I'm fine, I'm just tired and a bit drunk."

"It's Mum and Dad, isn't it?"

He felt bad snatching at the line Harry had thrown him, but it would keep his brother happy. And it did. They chatted some more about the situation at home. Meanwhile, Adam's head was on another matter altogether. He was thinking about the morning and how to shake Harry off before visiting the top floor.

The counterintuitive solution came to him as they were making their way upstairs to bed.

"Do you want to have a look around the top floor?" he asked.

What could Harry say? Adam had already told him enough of the story for it to be an intriguing prospect. By the time he'd ladled on some of the more graphic details gleaned from Chiara, Harry was raring to go.

SIGNORA DOCCI AND MARIA LEFT FOR TOWN SOON AFTER breakfast. Harry was all for making a move there and then, but Adam was more cautious. It seemed like an eternity before Maurizio and Chiara's top-of-the-line sedan glided past the front of the villa and down the driveway.

The key was exactly where Antonella had said it would be: in a hidden drawer in the bureau in Signora Docci's bedroom. It was smaller than Adam had imagined it to be, but it worked. It fitted the door at the top of the staircase and, with some judicious force, turned the mechanism.

The first impression was disappointing.

They found themselves in a stark, square hallway with two corridors running off it. This was about all they were able to discern until Harry applied his cigarette lighter to the gloom. They found the light switch and Adam twisted the ceramic knob. Nothing. Hopefully it was just the bulb.

The flickering flame revealed a tall door leading off the hallway toward the rear of the villa. It was locked, although the key was in place. They located the light switch on the other side, but that didn't work, either.

"Shit," said Adam.

"Shit," said Harry, dropping the lighter and plunging them into darkness. "I burnt my bloody hand."

Adam could hear him groping around on the floor for his lighter. "Let's just wait a moment, let our eyes adjust."

Sure enough, out of the darkness three faintly glowing panels emerged: three sets of windows leaking light through their louvered shutters on the far side of the large room.

"We'll have to open one," said Adam. "Give me the lighter."

The fluid was running low, but he made it to one of the windows, picking his way past furniture. He pulled open the center window and forced the shutters apart. They groaned on their rusty hinges, and a desiccated bird's nest floated down to the terrace below.

The sunlight cut a rude swath across the room. The first thing Adam noticed were his footprints in the thick dust coating the floor—evidence of an intrusion, not that there was anything to be done about it now.

Though not as lofty as those downstairs, the room still had a certain grandeur about it. There was an imposing fireplace of white marble, the walls were paneled up to the dado rail, and the ceiling was bedecked with frescoes.

"Jesus," said Harry, "what a mess."

Broken and twisted pieces of furniture lay scattered around the room. There were rococo console tables, upholstered and gilded chairs, a delicate divan with shattered legs and a broken back.

An intricately carved frame was all that remained of the antique mirror above the fireplace. Its broken glass was strewn across the floor in front of the hearth, and in this debris lay the marble ashtray that one of the Germans had evidently hurled at the mirror.

"Paddler," said Harry. He was staring up at the ceiling.

The frescoes were eighteenth century from the look of them: overblown and slightly suffocating, with lots of ballooning flesh and ruddy-cheeked cherubs on show. The centerpiece was a depiction of Diana and her hunting party, but it looked more like the aftermath of a bloody skirmish. Diana had been shot between the eyes. She also sported two bullet holes instead of nipples. One of her attendants had been blasted in the groin and the cherubs had been picked off like hapless birds.

"Fucking philistines," murmured Harry.

Adam lingered when Harry wandered through to the adjacent rooms. The gramophone player on the table against the wall suggested that this was the scene of Emilio's murder.

According to Chiara, Emilio had fired into the gramophone to kill the music and attract the attention of the two Germans busy lobbing another piece of furniture out of the window. This detail of her account certainly appeared to be correct. There was a bullet hole in the gramophone's wooden casing. It was deep, but not so deep that the bullet had passed clean through. Which meant it should still be there, embedded in the wood. Only, it wasn't. Someone had removed it with the aid of a knife or some other such implement. The mouth of the hole was scored with nicks and notches where someone had gouged it free.

"Look at this," called Harry from the room next door.

He had thrown the shutters wide open. Adam peered outside. The workmen hammering together a low wooden dais at the center of the parterre were fully engrossed in their work, but he still drew the shutters back a touch.

"Hey," complained Harry.

"You can still see."

The room had obviously served as some sort of dormitory. There were four canvas cots still with their bedding, counterpanes folded down, pillows puffed up. They had made their beds, even knowing they'd be gone by nightfall.

"Nothing's been touched," said Harry.

This wasn't quite true. There were a couple of wooden filing cabinets in the corner. Their contents had been searched, the papers hastily replaced on the shelves. A few stray files lay shrouded in dust on the floor, like flatfish waiting for prey.

The next room was a corner room, and clearly the Germans' operations center. There were metal desks and cabinets, and a letterboard with cross-garterings was attached to the wall. A couple of typewriters had not made the last truck out, and judging from the ashes heaped in the grate, a large amount of paperwork had ended up as smoke. Harry seemed more than happy to poke around, so Adam slipped away.

He returned to the scene of the shooting and tried to picture the events unfolding around him: Emilio and Maurizio coming through the door, the two Germans busy at the window, their backs turned, oblivious to the fact that they had company because of the music blaring from the gramophone player. He saw Emilio taking in the destruction around him—the broken mirror, the bullet holes in the ceiling frescoes—before leveling his gun at the gramophone and firing.

It was easy to imagine an argument ensuing, as Chiara had described. What else had she said? That Emilio was standing near the fireplace when he was shot.

Adam wandered over. He examined the marble surround and the walls on both sides for evidence of a stray shot, but found nothing. That's when he noticed that the rug in front of the hearth was not centered. It had been dragged a few feet to one side. He crouched down and folded back the edge of the rug.

The stain was large and irregular. Emilio had bled a lot.

The pool of blood was still fresh when it had been covered up, judging from the mirror impression on the underside of the rug. This wasn't what attracted Adam's attention, though—it was the bullet hole in the boards near the middle of the stain, easy to miss if it hadn't been for the slanting light.

He leaned closer, running his finger around the rim of the depression. As with the gramophone player, there were score marks in the wood where the bullet had been removed. This must have occurred sometime after the event, or fresh blood would have seeped into the notches, whereas clean new wood showed through them.

The bullet might have vanished, but the grim truth remained: Emilio had not been fired on by the German from across the room; he had been executed at close range when already on the floor.

Hearing Harry returning, Adam folded back the rug and got to his feet.

The rest of the day passed in a mist of distraction. Harry made a phone call, then announced he was heading into town. It was his last chance to see the Swedish Finn. Her boyfriend would be back at the weekend, and Harry planned to leave for Venice on Sunday.

"A day to recover from the party, then I'm out of your hair. Tell me you'll miss me."

"I'll miss you."

"That was almost convincing."

"It's true."

"Then this might be the time to talk about you advancing me a small loan for the rest of my trip."

"As soon as I've figured out what my own plans are."

Which was easier said than done.

He felt numb, incapable of clear thought, after the discovery on the top floor. It was the closest thing to hard evidence against Maurizio—no, the only thing so far that approximated any kind of evidence. The rest was speculation rooted in hearsay and intuition.

The bullet hole in the floorboards changed everything. Emilio had been executed while on the floor. This was completely at odds with Maurizio and Gaetano's account of what happened that night, and pointed to their collusion in the killing. As for Benedetto, it was clear now that he had indeed discovered the truth. Who other than Benedetto had gouged the bullets free from the floor and the gramophone player? Torn between bringing down his only remaining son and doing nothing, Benedetto had opted for a third way—sealing off the top floor and burying Emilio in the family chapel, stark and close reminders to Maurizio of his heinous crime.

But Benedetto had not stopped there. His bizarre behavior in the immediate aftermath of Emilio's death hinted at another agenda. In closing the top floor, he had preserved the scene of the crime, with its telltale clues. Why had he done this? So that someone else might one day decipher the truth? And why had he then taken Emilio's gun and secreted it behind the plaque in the chapel, along with the bullets? Because those relics of the murder offered hard, ballistic proof that Emilio had been killed with his own weapon? It seemed quite likely. It seemed more than likely.

This was all well and good, except for the fact that Adam now found himself caught on the horns of the biggest dilemma of his life. Should he act, or do as Benedetto had done: nothing? Why should he pursue the matter further, when the victim's own father had chosen not to do so? This was a serious business. This was murder. And it surprised him that the enormity of what he had embarked on hadn't occurred to him before.

His instinct was to make for the memorial garden. It was where he usually went to gather his thoughts. Not this time, though. If he was going to face some plain and hard truths, he couldn't risk exposing himself to its influence.

It was a preposterous notion, and not one he would have shared with any soul, but he still had the uneasy feeling that Flora Bonfadio, dead in 1548, was largely responsible for his current predicament. She had set him on his course, and she had been illuminating his path ever since. The flash of guilt in Maurizio's eyes, the revelation about Emilio's paternity—other insights too—all had come to him while passing through her kingdom.

Nor could he rid himself of the sensation that she had also exercised a similar control over matters relating more directly to her. She had nudged, cajoled and teased him, revealing her own tragic story to him piecemeal, as if by will. How could he be expected to enjoy a dinner in his honor when he had discovered nothing that she hadn't already chosen to share with him? And now that she had finally broken her centuries-old silence, why did he have the unnerving sensation that she expected something from him in return?

No, the memorial garden was not the place to head in search of clarity. He needed distance, and lots of it. Which was why he made for his bicycle and peddled off into the hills.

The moment he saw the sign, he knew that's where he would go. Sant'Andrea in Percussina was not so much a village as a hamlet strung out along a country road, the sort of place you passed through without so much as a second glance or thought. But if Fausto was to be believed, it was here that Niccolo Machiavelli had written one of the world's most controversial and prophetic works of political science: II Principe.

Fausto was right. The first person Adam collared directed him to the modest stone property that had once been Machiavelli's country residence. It lay dormant, the windows shuttered against more than the heat. He walked around to the overgrown garden at the back and tried to imagine Machiavelli strolling there, hatching his ideas, or hunched at a table, scratching away with a pen.

He knew the book well. It was short, to the point, uncompromising in its opinions—a manual for rulers on how to obtain and maintain political power. Machiavelli didn't shy from the more unpleasant realities of the political world. Anything was acceptable just so long as it served the primary goal: the survival of the state. This took precedence over all else. Even religious and moral imperatives were to be ignored by a ruler if they vied with his own interests.

Men of all political persuasions had bent Machiavelli's model of statecraft to their own ends over the intervening centuries, and Adam now found himself drawing guidance from The Prince, from the bald pragmatism that suffused the book.

Whatever Maurizio might or might not have done on the top floor of the Villa Docci fourteen years before, what was he, Adam, now going to do about it? Confront Maurizio with a direct accusation based on a few scraps of evidence? Run to Signora Docci and lay out his case? Of course not. He had taken the matter as far as he possibly could. Maurizio would no more be brought to justice than Federico Docci had been. Why pretend otherwise?

After this, his decision came easily.

ADAM WAS AWAKENED BY THE SOUND OF RUNNING WATER coming from his bathroom.

"Hello . . . ?" he called groggily.

"Yours is brown too."

He checked his watch. He'd slept for ten hours. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept for ten hours. "What?"

Harry appeared in the bathroom doorway. "The water—yours is brown too." He was unshaven and dressed in the same clothes he'd been wearing when he headed down into Florence.

"You just got back?"

"Uh-huh."

"You stayed the night?"

"Are you always this sharp first thing? Yes, I stayed the night. And now I'm back and I want a bath and the water's brown."

Adam rolled away onto his side. "So complain to the management, demand a refund."

Harry dumped himself on the mattress. "Good evening, was it?" "Hard to imagine, with you not there."

"Want to hear about mine?"

"Not especially."

Harry pointed to his cheek. "The boyfriend came back early."

Adam tried to focus. There was some discoloration at the side of Harry's mouth.

"He hit you?"

"I wish. He slapped me."

"He slapped you?"

"It's humiliating, believe me, worse than you think, being slapped by a very small and very angry Italian man."

"Why did he slap you?"

"Well, not because I polished off the milk in his fridge."

"I thought she lived with two girls."

"We went to his place."

"Harry, why on earth would you go to his place?"

"The view. It's got a great view, right along the river, the Ponte Vecchio, everything. He wasn't meant to come back till today."

"I give up."

"That's what he said."

"Huh?"

"When I had him by the throat: 'I give up.' He spoke good English."

Harry's use of the past tense was more than a little worrying.

"You didn't kill him? Tell me you didn't kill him."

"Of course not, but after that we couldn't exactly stay there."

"You don't say?"

"We went back to her place. She was upset. She asked me to hang around, so I did. She just drove me back on her scooter. It's a Lambretta." "Harry, I don't care."

"I think I'm going to get one for myself—a black Lambretta."

"With what? You're broke. You're always broke."

Harry turned on his side and grinned at Adam. "I'm glad you brought it up."

"How much do you need?"

"I don't know. Anything you can spare."

"You can have it all."

"Really?"

"I'm leaving on Sunday, same as you. You can have whatever's left."

Harry took in the news. "Why are you leaving?"

"I want to go home, I want to see Mum. That sounds pathetic, doesn't it?"

"No," said Harry. "Not if it means I get all the money."

By midmorning a small army had descended on the villa. Trucks and vans jostled for space in the courtyard, disgorging everything from flowers to food, crockery to Chinese lanterns. There were even two pigs skewered on spits, ready for roasting.

The whole operation unfolded with military precision, coordinated by a handful of generals hired for the occasion, with Signora Docci and Maurizio acting as joint commanders-in-chief. She seemed much more inclined to involve him and allow him a say than she had the other day.

Maria bustled about in her efficient and rather formidable fashion, keen to exercise her authority over the outsiders—a category to which Adam and Harry clearly belonged, in her view. They found themselves dispatched on numerous errands. It was on returning from one such menial mission that Adam found himself alone in the kitchen with Maria.

"La signora wants to see you in the study."

These were the first words of English he'd ever heard her speak. Her accent was thick, but the intonation perfect. He hoped that the slightly foreboding note in her voice was accidental.

Signora Docci was indeed in the study. She was seated behind the desk where Adam had spent so much of his time. And sitting in the middle of the desk was a bird's nest. Dusty and dried out, it was also disheveled after its descent from the top-floor window. Adam cursed himself silently for the oversight.

"Maria found it on the terrace yesterday. There is only one place it could have come from." There was no hostility in her voice, but there was a hard edge to her gaze, one he'd never seen before.

No point in playing dumb. Their footprints were all over the top floor. She had probably checked already.

"Did Antonella tell you where the key was? I hope she did. I don't like to think that you went through all my things looking for it."

"It's not her fault. I kept pestering her."

"Why?"

Adam shrugged. "Morbid curiosity. An untouched murder scene. A frozen moment in time."

All true, all things he had felt. He almost sounded convincing to himself.

"And was it worth it?"

"Worth it?"

"Worth risking our friendship over?"

Adam's mind shuddered to a halt. All he could think was: Christ, her English is good.

"I'm sorry," he said feebly.

"I don't mind that you've insulted me, but you have insulted Benedetto. You knew it was his wish."

"Yes."

After a long moment she brought her hands together. "Good. Well, let's not allow this to spoil your last week here."

"I'm leaving on Sunday with Harry."

"Oh." She seemed surprised, even disappointed.

"I've finished my work on the garden."

"I thought there were still questions."

There were, not least of all: Did the garden hold a clue to the identity of Flora's lover? The library had yielded no more information on Tullia d'Aragona following her sudden disappearance from view the year of Flora's death. She was definitely emerging as a viable contender. The hunchback poet, Girolamo Amelonghi, seemed a less likely candidate, and many of the other names on the list were excluded by dint of the fact that they'd outlived Flora by many years. There were still a few individuals he needed to check up on, but that was something that required a far more extensive library than Villa Docci had to offer.

"Nothing we'll ever know the answers to for sure."

"No, probably not," Signora Docci conceded.

The first thing Adam did was go in search of Harry. He found him in the courtyard, where two truckloads of water were replenishing the villa's depleted well. Antonella was also there—she had just arrived—which meant he only had to have the conversation once.

"A bloody bird's nest?" said Harry.

"Merda," said Antonella.

"She didn't seem too annoyed."

Antonella wasn't convinced. "We'll see."

"I'm sorry, it was completely my fault."

"I won't dispute that," said Harry.

They all played their part in the transformation of the parterre into an alfresco dining area. Circular tables spread with white linen mushroomed around the fringes, and were soon adorned with bone china, silver cutlery and crystal. The party unfolded in the same fashion every year: drinks on the villa terrace, dinner on the parterre, then dancing on the lower terrace. A gradual descent into debauchery, Harry remarked. Apparently, he wasn't too far wrong. The event had acquired something of a reputation over the years.

The big test for Adam came when he found himself thrown together with Maurizio, deciding on the placement of the flares around the terraces. They spent a good half hour in one another's company, and he was relieved to find that his resolve didn't falter once during that time. It wasn't even that he had to work at it. The matter of Maurizio's guilt or innocence had ceased to be a pressing concern, for the simple reason that all further speculation was ultimately futile. Besides, there was an innocent explanation for everything, even if you had to strain the laws of probabilities a little.

They chatted easily as they went about their business with the flares. There was even an intimacy in the way they ribbed each other. He suspected that his own shift in thinking wasn't solely responsible for this new familiarity. Some of the tension had also gone out of Maurizio since his mother's announcement that she would soon be vacating the villa, making way for her son.

The library and the study were designated as holding areas for the cohorts of waiters, waitresses and bar staff descending on the villa. Adam was asked to clear out all his books and papers. When he carried them upstairs to his room, he found Maria setting out a tuxedo on his bed, along with a dress shirt, bow tie, studs and cuff links. There was even a brand-new pair of patent-leather shoes. These he could keep, Maria explained; they were a gift from Signora Docci. A quick glance into Harry's room revealed the same kit laid out on his bed.

Signora Docci brushed aside their thanks, then retired to her room for a rest before the festivities kicked off. Antonella announced that she was heading home. Her brother, Edoardo, and Grazia were staying with her that night, and she still had beds to make, things to arrange. Adam walked her to her car, which she had parked in the farmyard, well out of the way. They took the track that led down the slope from the lower terrace. He had strolled through the farmyard on a couple of occasions, but he had never registered the high wooden doors set in the sandstone knoll on which Villa Docci perched.

"That is where the wine and the olive oil are made," said Antonella. When she proposed a quick tour, he didn't refuse. It was the first opportunity he'd had in a couple of days to be alone with her.

First came the dramatic drop in temperature. Then came the smell. Over the centuries the soft stone walls had soaked up the odors like a sponge. The huge vats where the grapes were trod and left to ferment were stained from past harvests and scrubbed spotless in anticipation of the next one, already ripening out there on the slopes.

They passed from the light heady scent of the tinaia to the thick musk of the frantoio. By the light of the bare overhead bulbs, Antonella explained how the olives were first crushed beneath a giant millstone turned by oxen, whose shod hooves had worn a circular furrow in the stone-paved floor over the centuries. The press resembled some medieval instrument of torture, with its giant turning screw and its beams clamped with iron. The whole operation was in need of modernization, Antonella explained, but Signora Docci was reluctant to throw out the ancient equipment as long as it still functioned.

"You must come and see it when it's working."

"Is that an invitation?"

"You don't need an invitation."

They made their way back through the underground labyrinth.

"Nonna says you are leaving on Sunday."

"That's the plan."

"It has gone quickly, your time here."

"Too quickly."

Antonella stopped at the door. "I'm going to do this now because we can't later." She took a step toward him and kissed him, a fragile and lingering embrace. When she threw the light switch, plunging them into darkness, he assumed it was a prelude to something a little more intimate. But she slipped outside, playfully dodging his lunge.

He caught up with her as she was getting into her car. "Don't be late," she said.

"Late?"

"For Nonna's special drinks on the terrace."

He wasn't late, even though he lost ten minutes battling with his bow tie. In the end, Harry tied it for him, which was unexpected. The first thing they noticed on heading downstairs was that

Harry's sculpture had ousted the bronze of a striding tiger from its pride of place on the table in the entrance hall—an undoubted honor, but also a cause of some consternation for Harry.

It was a small gathering, immediate family and their partners. Adam recognized Antonella's mother immediately: the same lustrous black hair, the same almond eyes, the proud lift of the chin. She was a beautiful woman with an attractive whiff of danger about her. She was also older than he'd imagined, or maybe it was just the aura of a life lived to the full and fast catching up with her. Riccardo, her boyfriend, was her signal to the world that she was still a step or two ahead. A dark, lantern-jawed man in his thirties, he was improbably handsome. Against all apparent odds, he was also very cultivated and amusing. He was a cellist with an orchestra in Rome, although he was reluctant to talk about it. This was the first Friday night he'd had away from his work in months, and the last thing he wanted to do was discuss music—he wanted to remember how sensible people spent their Friday nights.

When Antonella and Edoardo arrived, they both greeted their mother warmly. Neither had met Riccardo before, and while Caterina made the introductions, Adam was able to admire the view.

Antonella's dress was made of shimmering midnight blue silk, which hung from her slender, tawny frame like liquid. The halter neck left her shoulders, back and arms bare, while the deep V neckline flirted tantalizingly with disaster. Her hair flowed freely about her shoulders but was pinned back off her forehead, brazenly revealing her scars.

He must have been staring at her like an idiot, because Harry leaned close and whispered in his ear, "It's great when you catch God at his work, isn't it?"

It was an enjoyable event, helped along by attentive waiters forever topping up champagne flutes. Signora Docci looked magnificent in an emerald green gown, its bright, bold color matching her mood. Only Maurizio seemed a little out of sorts, and only when in Adam's company. He could feel the heat of hostility coming off Maurizio, melting the memories of the easygoing rapport that had marked their exchanges earlier in the day. There wasn't much time to dwell on this before Maria came through to the terrace with news that the first guests were arriving. Signora Docci went off to do her duty in the entrance hall. Her two children and four grandchildren went with her.

"It is time for the Doccis to smile and pretend to be a family," said Riccardo, somewhat unfairly, it seemed to Adam.

The party's reputation proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was clear from the start that people were bent on enjoying themselves. Most arrived well within the first half-hour, a steady stream of humanity soon filling the back terrace to overflowing. Some made for the parterre and the lower terrace. It was an idyllic sight: well- dressed couples strolling in the waning sunlight against the backdrop of the rolling hills to the accompaniment of the string quartet.

Taking Adam aside, Harry announced breathlessly that he'd just met the most amazing woman. The fact that she was married appeared to have no bearing on the matter, and Harry hurried off to make some alterations to the place settings.

Adam sought out Signora Docci, who was in discussion with a middle-aged couple. She used his arrival as an excuse to peel away, slipping her arm through his and leading him off.

"Where are we going?"

"Anywhere but there."

Picking their way down the steps to the parterre, she explained that the man was a friend of Maurizio, a fellow partisan from the war. And like many partisans she had known, he'd been less set on fighting the Germans than on looting the factories the enemy destroyed while in retreat. Being first on the scene, the members of the Italian underground were often best placed to control the black market in any goods that survived. First it was shoes from Poggibonsi, then hats from Impruneta.

"He," she said, with a slight jerk of the head behind her, "came to our door with both. His prices were ridiculous." She gave a little laugh. "Our heroes of the struggle. Look at them now—no different."

Adam had to ask. "And Maurizio?"

"Let's just say, he never sold to us."

She smiled and nodded at the leader of the chamber quartet as they negotiated their way across the parterre. They stopped at the balustrade, looking down over the lower terrace, the hills beyond already falling into silhouette.

"It's changing so fast."

"What?"

She couldn't mean the view. Medieval peasants wouldn't have looked out of place in it.

"The world. Or maybe every age thinks just the same thing."

"Maybe."

"Big changes are coming. I can see it everywhere ... music, theater, films, art. Look at Harry's sculpture. Have you ever seen anything like it? Don't listen to the politicians, always look at the artists, they're the first to tell us where we're going."

"Have you been talking to him?"

"Harry?"

"It's not the first time I've heard that line of argument."

She laughed. "Well, that one was mine."

They were approached by a passing couple. A few pleasantries were exchanged, Adam was introduced by Signora Docci, but the couple soon took the veiled hint from their hostess and moved on.

Signora Docci ground the tip of the cane into the gravel at their feet, observing her handiwork for a moment before looking up.

"You have a gift, Adam, don't waste it."

"You have been talking to him."

"He's right. You sense things other people don't."

"Or maybe I'm so ordinary that anything that isn't disturbs me."

She laughed. "I'm sorry you're leaving. I'm also sorry we only met at the end of my life. I think we could have been very good friends."

Embarrassment left him mute. No one had ever spoken to him in such terms before.

"Remember those words," she said.

"I will."

She turned stiffly and surveyed the villa with an approving eye—the stir and hum on the terrace, the lowering sun skimming the roof.

"Now take this old lady back to her guests. It's time to announce dinner."

Harry had engineered matters so that Signora Pedretti—the new love of his life—was seated between them.

"Make me look good," said Harry, seeing her approach their table.

"How?" asked Adam.

"Just be yourself."

Signora Pedretti was young, petite, impishly beautiful. Her delicate wrists glistened with gold, and her mouth was a startling splash of color. She didn't appear nearly as surprised as Harry by the fact that providence had thrown them together again. Nor was she unhappy about it.

She proved considerably better company than the woman to Adam's left, who only came to life when he finally remarked on the jewels blazing at her neck. She was French, Parisian, married to the American gentleman holding forth on the far side of the table about the benefits of the fertilizers and hybrid grains he sold to the Italians. God knows how much money he had made importing "superior American product," as he termed it—quite a bundle, if his wife's necklace was anything to go by—but he talked like a man on a humanitarian mission. Italy was poor, ravaged by war and desperately in need of being dragged into the twentieth century. He, of course, was proud to be playing his part in this mercy mission.

His words clearly rankled the Italians around the table, but out of politeness, or maybe stupefaction, they held themselves in check. It took an Englishwoman to light the touch paper. Adam had been introduced to her earlier in the evening—a tall, pale creature, gaunt and ascetic, with a bony high-ridged nose and heavy-lidded eyes that lent her a misleading air of boredom. It was a distinctive and familiar look, a particular brand of ugliness reserved for the English upper classes.

Those same lugubrious eyes now twinkled with mischief as she leaned forward, searching out the Italian faces around the table.

"I happen to know a lot of Americans," she said with her cut- glass accent, "and please don't think for a moment that they are all like Seymour."

"Vera . . ." There was a note of friendly forbearance in Seymour's voice that suggested they were well acquainted.

"Can't you see they're only tolerating you? They find your views offensive. As do I."

"I'm not trying to be offensive."

"I know," replied Vera with a wicked smile, "it comes naturally."