The Savage Garden

Seymour gave a hearty laugh. "Touche."

"If the United States is so worried about communism and Russia's interest in Italy, which is a questionable notion now that that funny little man Khrushchev is premier, then you really should spend less time treating this country like a marketplace for your goods and more time making friends."

The ensuing debate ran right through the starter of blue mullet and on into the spit-roasted pork stuffed with garlic and rosemary (which tasted as good as it had been smelling all afternoon). It was a lively and generally good-natured discussion about Fascists, Monarchists and democracy, poverty, overpopulation and America's desire to create the world in its own image. Even Harry and Signora Pedretti broke off from their quiet flirtation to chip in a comment from time to time.

Seymour fought his corner valiantly and with dignity, never losing his studied jauntiness, whereas his wife grew tetchy and spiteful. Her unquestioning belief in the redemptive power of economic prosperity bore all the hallmarks of religious zealotry. Her god was the one true god, and all unbelievers were doomed to damnation, or worse still: communism.

The discussion petered out over pudding, by which time the first stars were overhead, the torches had been lit around the parterre, and Adam was wondering just how much longer he could go without seeing Antonella. The moment the band struck up on the lower terrace, he downed the rest of his coffee and went in search of her.

People were rising now, making for the music. Through the building throng he saw her talking to Maria, who had abandoned the refuge of the villa. Maria was smiling—which in itself was a rarity—but it was her hands that seemed different. They made quick and expressive gestures as she talked. Her dark eyes lost some of their luster when she saw Adam approaching, and she only stayed long enough to acknowledge his greeting.

"Poor Maria," said Antonella.

"Is there a problem?"

"Only that she is a bit drunk." She hooked her arm through his. "Come, I want you to meet someone."

The elderly man in question was on the point of nodding off, his bald crown tracing a lazy circle in the air. The table where he was seated was deserted, except for a young couple on the far side, engrossed, pressed close in conversation, a picture of barely suppressed desire. When Antonella and Adam took a seat on either side of the man, he started like a soldier called to attention.

"Rodolfo, this is Adam," Antonella said in Italian.

Rodolfo's head snapped round. "Adam?"

"And the garden . . ."

"Oh, the garden Adam. Does he speak Italian? Of course he does. Crispin wouldn't have sent him if he didn't speak Italian."

"You know Professor Leonard?" asked Adam.

"Yes, yes, of course." Rodolfo gripped his forearm surprisingly hard. "Congratulations. I've known that garden almost all my life. What you have done is, well, exceptional. Have you told Crispin yet? Of course you have."

"No."

"No? Why not?"

"I don't know."

"Well, you must, you must. He knew there was something in that garden. He knew it. He often said so. And it annoyed him that he couldn't identify it. We were young—your age— though of course we were both much better-looking." He found this extremely amusing. "Anyway, we went there a lot with Francesca"—he jabbed a crooked finger at Antonella—"her grandmother. I should say that I hated Crispin then. You see, I knew I was only there for one reason—because they couldn't be alone together."

"Why not?"

"It was a long time ago. It wasn't allowed. I, the boy who had always loved her, had to stand by and watch her lose her heart to him."

This was clearly news to Antonella. "Really?"

Her eyes flicked to Adam. He feigned an equal degree of surprise.

"Yes, but that's beside the point. The point is that Crispin sensed something right back then. Sometimes we would go there by ourselves, the two of us, him and me—that's when I grew to like him. He sensed it, you see?" Rodolfo patted Adam on the hand. "You'll send me your thesis and I'll have it translated. I'll even see it published for you. Oh, nothing very exciting—a departmental journal at the university—but that's how it begins for all of us." He gave a short and slightly demented snigger. "And in sixty years if you play your cards right, you can be just like me—penniless, half-drunk at a party, and wondering what you've done with another man's cigar." He searched around him.

Antonella pointed. "It's in your hand."

"So it is. Now, you two youngsters go and join the other apes prancing in the cage." He made to relight the cigar. Antonella blew out the match.

"One dance," she said.

"No."

"I insist."

"Persuade me."

"It might be our last."

"Good point. Help me up."

It was a big band, with lots of brass, and it played big band numbers. Which was fine for those who knew how to dance to big band numbers, and not so good for those who didn't know how to dance to anything. To make matters worse, Rodolfo could dance—he could really dance. He also had remarkable stamina for a man his age, which gave Adam lots of time to dread the handover. When it finally came, he felt duty-bound to confess to Antonella that he had two left feet (one of which was still stiff and sore from his stumble in the memorial garden).

The alcohol helped, so did the excuse to lay his hands on her.

The band was set up on a tiered dais just in front of the stone balustrade. The dance floor consisted of a giant boarded circle at the heart of the terrace, with the marble fountain as a centerpiece. It was ringed by tall screens of tight-clipped yew strung with Chinese lanterns and flanked by flaming torches, which cast wild and restless shadows. Penned in by the hedges, the music was all- engulfing.

"Did you enjoy dinner?" asked Antonella as they fought for their patch on the crowded floor.

"Yes."

"Nonna said you would. Vera is very . . .provocativa."

"She certainly is."

"She is a lesbian, you know?"

"Odd, she didn't say."

Pressed close by the crush, Adam allowed his hand to stray.

"You're not wearing any underwear." "I can't with this dress."

"How does it feel?"

"It feels good. You should try it some time."

He hoped the ambiguity was deliberate.

"God, you're beautiful," he said, his head thick with desire.

"Thank you."

"I want to kiss you."

"We can't." She gave a theatrical flick of the wrist. "The scandal..."

"I don't care. Tomorrow's my last day."

"I know. That's why you're invited to lunch. In Siena. You said you wanted to see Siena. They're friends of Edoardo's. Harry can come too. It's all organized."

"I want to be alone with you."

She pressed her lips to his ear. "Then it's lucky I have a plan."

She refused to elaborate.

A little while later, he lost her to a string of competitors, beginning with her brother, Edoardo. Adam received Grazia in exchange. He hobbled his way through a couple of numbers with her, then she too was taken from him, at which point he renounced the dance floor for the bar nearby. He was waiting to be served when Harry stalked up to him.

"Her husband's not here."

It took a moment for Adam to realize he was talking about Signora Pedretti. "I know, she said over dinner."

"But a bunch of his friends are." Harry lit a cigarette and glared about him.

"Harry, are you seriously trying to seduce a married woman?"

"I think so. Yes. Why? You think it's a bad idea?" He hesitated. "Shit, it's a bad idea, isn't it?" "Is it enough to know she would—under different circumstances, I mean?"

"Maybe."

"So ask her."

"Ask her?"

"Yes. Then you'll know. And then her husband's friends won't have to kill you."

There was a simple logic to the suggestion that Adam suspected would appeal to Harry. It did. Harry tripped off in search of Signora Pedretti, greeting Antonella's mother as he went. Caterina approached Adam with the controlled steps of someone who knows they've strayed beyond their limit.

"Where's Riccardo?" he asked.

"Talking to my mother." She gave a sardonic smile. "I think she approves."

"He's great."

"So is Antonella." She nodded toward the dance floor. "I saw you dancing with her. You like her, don't you?"

Something in her voice brought out a defensive streak in him.

"Is that so hard to understand?"

"Of course not, I am her mother."

"Yes, I like her."

"Men do. That is never a problem for her."

Intentionally or otherwise, her words placed him somewhere in a long line of foolhardy suitors, and he was happy that the barman asked him for his order at that moment.

"One of those, please," he said, pointing to Caterina's cocktail glass.

It was unpronounceable. And almost undrinkable.

"Did she tell you what happened to her face?"

The directness of the question threw him momentarily.

"Your mother did."

"I was driving."

"I know."

"And Antonella was the one asking me to go faster. Did my mother tell you that?"

"No."

"No, of course she didn't. No one remembers that."

He looked at her and saw a drunk and guilt-ridden mother still groping for excuses many years on.

"You don't believe me? It's true. She was . . .selvaggia. Not like Edoardo. Una piccola selvaggia."

A little savage.

He could feel his hackles rising now. Looking to dilute her responsibility was one thing; harboring a hateful grudge against the daughter she'd disfigured seemed downright unreasonable.

"Were you drunk when it happened?" he asked, biting back a more aggressive riposte.

"Is that what you heard?"

"No."

The tension went out of her frame. After a moment, she said in a lowered voice, "Yes, I was drunk. Emilio was dead . . . just two months before." She glanced away. "I loved my brother."

Yet another junction in the cat's cradle of cause and effect: Emilio's murder and the scars on Antonella's face.

Adam turned to the dance floor, where Antonella was spinning in the arms of some new admirer. "Look at her," he said. "Look at the way she is. She doesn't mind. Why should you?"

Caterina seemed on the point of mouthing a response, but she walked away without speaking.

A moment later, Harry came striding up to him.

"Great idea, Paddler."

"What?"

"She said yes."

"Who?"

"Who do you think? I asked her and she said yes she would, if circumstances were different."

"Good, so now you know."

"No," said Harry, "now I have to go and wait for her in the olive grove." He slapped Adam on the back. "Great bloody tactic."

"Harry . . ."

Harry didn't turn; he just waggled his fingers in the air as he slipped away through the crowd.

"Oh shit," muttered Adam.

He twisted back to the barman and asked for a bottle of mineral water.

Not long after, the numbers started to thin out. The champagne caught up with Grazia, who lost the ability to stand, let alone dance, at which point Edoardo and Adam bundled her into the car. Antonella drove. She said she'd be back to pick up Adam and Harry at eleven o'clock, which was less than eight hours off. Adam made a futile search for Harry. Then he headed for his bed.

Maurizio must have been watching him, tracking his movements, biding his time. He intercepted Adam at the head of the steps leading to the parterre.

"Do you have a cigarette?" he asked, his voice a gentle drawl.

Adam reached inside his jacket for his cigarettes and lighter.

Maurizio's hand shot out. "I thought so," he said, indicating the label sewn near the pocket. "It's my brother's suit."

"Is it?"

Maurizio took hold of Adam's shirt cuff, exposing the cuff link. "And these are his too." The voice was calm, the eyes coldly attentive, but his fingers trembled with a barely suppressed rage.

"I didn't know."

"No?" Maurizio took a cigarette from Adam's pack and lit one. "And when you stole the key from my mother's room, did you know what you were doing then?" He smiled thinly, relishing Adam's discomfort. "Maria told me. She thought I should know."

"I've apologized to your mother."

"And what were you looking for up there?"

"I was just curious to see."

"And what did you see?"

"A lot of dust and some German desks." Maybe it was Maurizio's hectoring tone, but he found himself adding, "I also saw where Emilio was murdered."

Maurizio's face seemed strangely pale in the lambent light of the flares.

"Near the fireplace," Adam went on, emboldened. "But then you know that—you were there."

Maurizio recovered his composure, a pursed smile stealing over his features. "It's good that your work is finished and you are leaving." He handed back the cigarettes and lighter. "Thank you." Turning on his heel, he made his way down the stone steps.

Adam was filled with a sudden flood of anger. He wanted to run after him, to seize him, shake him, scream at him: You fool! Don't you see? I was happy to let it go, I wanted to let it go, to walk away. But now I can't. All you had to do was say nothing till I was gone.

As he fumbled a cigarette between his lips his gaze dropped to the terrace below—to the dark mass of the chapel lurking beyond the moonlight in the shadow of the sandstone bluff. And in that moment it struck him that he was wrong. Maurizio was not to blame. He was no more in control of matters than Adam was. They were simply actors playing out a drama, their roles already written for them.

HARRY SAT UP FRONT WITH ANTONELLA, SHOUTING AT HER over the music blaring from the car radio. Adam lay sprawled across the backseat, pretending to doze. He had in fact slept surprisingly well; he just wanted a private moment to work through the details of the scheme he'd hatched.

Every now and then he would sneak a peek at Antonella, her hair tied back in a ponytail, revealing her small ears. Harry was remarkably perky given that he'd waited in the olive grove for well over an hour before falling asleep at the base of a tree, waking with the sun on his face. He still clung to the belief that Signora Pedretti had come looking for him, despite Antonella's insistence that the woman was a notorious and mischievous flirt.

Antonella spurned the new road to Siena in favor of the old Via Volterrana, which twisted through the hills. It played to her recklessness behind the wheel—another good reason for Adam to have his eyes closed. They stopped briefly at San Gimignano, its ancient towers a testament to the competing vanities of its medieval merchants. Not so very different to what was going on in London right now, Adam observed. Harry told him to stop showing off.

Siena silenced them both with the rise and fall of her sinuous streets, the curving facades of her palaces, and her main square, the Campo, not a square at all, but a shell-shaped hollow at the heart of the hilled city. Siena was everything Florence wasn't—soft, curvaceous, feminine—and it was easy to see why her citizens had formed a special attachment to the Virgin. While Florence proclaimed its power, Siena exuded a quiet, contained strength. Buried in her coiling thoroughfares and her warm brickwork was a sense that she could absorb whatever was thrown at her. She might bend a bit, but she would never break.

Lunch was had in the walled garden of a large ground-floor apartment. Edoardo and Grazia were already there, as were ten or so other guests. Their host was a genial and unassuming little law professor. Adam never got a chance to speak to him. As soon as the pasta bowls had been cleared, Antonella announced that she was taking Adam off to see the "Crete Senesi." He had no idea what she meant, but he didn't protest. Harry said he'd stay behind, grab a lift back to Florence with Edoardo and Grazia.

"I told you I had a plan," said Antonella as they stepped from the apartment building into the deserted street.

"Where are we really going?"

"Oh, I wasn't lying."

The Crete Senesi turned out to be the vast sweep of undulating hills south of Siena—a ridged ocean of high, rolling pastures melting away into the far distance. Bleak and bald, it was an altogether different landscape from the one they'd traveled through that morning.

Adam saw from the map that their route took them close to Montaperti, the scene of the fierce battle so vividly described by Fausto. A detour was out of the question, though; they were on a tight schedule.

They hurtled south along dusty tracks, through straggling little villages. Fortresslike farms brooded on cypress-crowned hilltops, reminders of a time when you didn't just have to store your grain, you had to guard it against marauders. The vistas were endless and not a cloud broke the monotony of the clear blue sky.

To Adam it was a cheerless and uninviting world. Even more so in late summer, Antonella explained, when the crops were in and the patchwork slopes had been ploughed into a uniform desertscape. She rhapsodized about the area. It didn't want to be loved, she said, but that wasn't a reason not to love it. Adam only began to understand what she meant when they arrived at their first destination.

The abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore was perched precariously on a spur among crumbling sandstone canyons. For the white-robed monks it was a life lived on the edge of the abyss, literally and metaphorically. The colorful frescoes in the main cloister depicted the life of Saint Bernard. The cycle was sprinkled with pouting, firm-buttocked young men, leaving little doubt as to how the Sienese painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi had come by his nickname, Il Sodoma.

Twenty hair-raising minutes south lay Pienza, her back to the high ground, the Crete lapping at her feet. The small town's perfect Renaissance piazza was all that remained of a Sienese pope's dream to relocate the Holy See to his own part of the world. Way to the west, beyond the corrugated hills, the impressive mass of

Monte Amiata stood out in bold relief against the clear sky—a conical parody of a volcano, now dormant.

They dropped back into the Crete, making for Montalcino on the other side. They never arrived. Ten minutes out, while barreling along a hard white track, Antonella slammed on the brakes. The car slewed wildly before coming to a halt.

"I almost missed it."

Dust swirled around the vehicle. Adam was still gripping the dashboard. "What? You hit it? What was it?"

Antonella laughed. "The turning."

A rutted track cleaved a slope of towering sunflowers, falling sharply toward a bowl in the hills, and an oasis of dense, dark trees.

"Follow me," said Antonella, abandoning the car at the tree line and setting off on foot.

He smelled it first, another odor fighting with the sharp, sweet scent of pine sap. It was the smell of decay, of something dead and done for. Antonella walked on, threading her way through the trees. He was a few paces behind her when they entered the clearing.

"Wow," he said quietly.

The walls of the rectangular pool were made of travertine blocks, some of which had been dislodged by the roots of encroaching trees. A narrow flight of steps led down into the water, which was chalky white, somehow both clear and opaque at the same time. Bubbles rose lazily to the surface at intervals, and the smell of sulphur hung heavy in the air.

"From Monte Amiata," explained Antonella. "There are lots of thermal springs in the area. But this one is special. It's very old, probably Roman."

Her uncle Emilio had shown it to her and Edoardo when they were younger. He had told them they could only share the secret with one other person, one person each. He had made them swear. She appeared a little embarrassed by this confession.

"Am I really that person?"

Antonella gave a sheepish smile. "Actually, you're the fourth."

He laughed, taking her in his arms and kissing her gently on the lips. "Well, thanks anyway."

"Let's go in."

She kicked off her shoes, then turned her back on him, pulling her long hair aside. "Do you mind?"

His hand was trembling slightly as he undid the zip of her dress. She eased it from her shoulders, allowing it to fall to the ground. She wore matching underwear—plain, simple, startlingly white against her amber skin. She stood all but naked before him, surprisingly unabashed.

"You're staring."

"I don't think I've ever seen anything quite so beautiful."

She removed her bra and stepped out of her panties.

"Okay, so I was wrong."

She smiled. "Your turn."

His fingers fumbled with his belt buckle. The sulphurous vapors coming off the pool no longer stung his nostrils; they washed over him in heady waves, intoxicating.

When he was done, and his clothes lay bundled at his feet, she stepped toward him and pressed her lean body against his, dark skin against pale. They kissed, hands roaming, growing in courage as the same restless urge consumed them. She gripped his wrist and guided his fingers to the warm cleft of her thighs, the hair already matted with moisture. She let out a long, low moan as he eased a finger inside her. Her hips moved, setting the rhythm for him.

"Don't stop," she purred, "I'm very close."

A few moments later, she came, shuddering against him, their mouths locked together, stifling her cries.

She hung limp and drained in his arms. "Thank you. You're very gentle." "Am I?"

"Yes."

She kissed him tenderly, her long fingers briefly closing around him, caressing him. Then she took his hand and led him silently to the pool. The stone steps stopped just below the waterline, and they lowered themselves down till their feet sunk into the soft, viscous mud coating the bottom. The water was hot, but not uncomfortably so.

They swam in slow circles, heads bobbing on the milky surface, stopping every so often to stand in the shallower parts. The therapeutic waters would cure him of every ailment known to man, apparently, although everything seemed to be in working order, she added, reaching for him beneath the surface. She didn't let go. They kissed hungrily. He raised her up, dipping his head to kiss her breasts. She hooked her legs around his waist and reached behind her, guiding him into her. That's when he lost his footing and they both went under. They came up laughing.

The steps offered the perfect support. She carried her weight on her elbows, facing him, her eyes never leaving his. At first he just stood there, relishing her tight, oily grip, the primordial sludge oozing between his toes. Then he began to move slowly, his hands clasping her narrow hips. Whorls and eddies spiraled off around them. She spurred him on with breathless words until he was driving into her. She came again, just before he did. His own release hit him so hard that he had to seize the steps behind her to steady himself.

Later, bumping along back up the track to the gravel road, their clothes clinging to their damp bodies, Antonella turned to him. "You're very quiet. Say something."

"Whenever I smell sulphur I'll always think of you."

She punched him in the arm.

There was no time to see Montalcino, or anywhere else for that matter. Antonella had promised her grandmother that she'd have him back at Villa Docci by eight o'clock for his farewell dinner.

"It might not be my farewell dinner," offered Adam tentatively.

He told her he wanted to see the Piero della Francesca frescoes in Arezzo before leaving Italy, and that he planned to catch a train there when Harry boarded his to Venice. He could leave his suitcases at Villa Docci. It would mean at least another night together when he came back to pick them up.

He felt bad lying to her. He felt worse when she offered to drive him to Arezzo herself. He turned down her offer, mumbling some lame excuse that she didn't contest, although it threw her into a silent little sulk. She seemed to have shrugged it off by the time they pulled up at her farmhouse. In fact, he assumed he had not only been forgiven but was about to be invited upstairs to her bedroom. Why else hadn't she driven directly to Villa Docci? Because she wanted to walk there, she explained.

They took the path that snaked down through the olive grove, the same one they had walked less than a week before at almost exactly the same hour. Adam was struck by how much had happened in that brief time. When they last trod the route together they hadn't yet kissed, Harry had yet to show up, the mystery of the memorial garden was still unsolved, and his suspicions about Maurizio's role in Emilio's death were no more than that: vague instincts unsupported by evidence.

He now had the foundations of a case against Maurizio, and with any luck he'd soon have the proof. What he would do with it, he didn't yet know.

They made their way up through the memorial garden, through the thickening shadows, his arm around her shoulder, hers around his waist. Antonella stopped at the foot of the amphitheater and looked up at Flora.

"What?" he asked.

"It's a beautiful sight."

"It is."

He made to leave, but Antonella held him tight, refusing to budge. "Wait," she said.

At first he took it for the wind. It sounded like a light breeze rustling fallen leaves. Only when she pointed did he realize it was the sound of running water. Reflecting the steel-blue gleam of the twilight sky, they looked like two streams of mercury, girding the amphitheater in a shimmering belt and flowing into the long trough at their feet, which, he now noticed, had been cleared of debris since his last visit.

He turned to Antonella.

"It's for you," she said. "A gift."

"From you?"

"And Nonna. She paid for the two truckloads of water."

"They're up there?"

"It wasn't easy."

"You set me up?"

"With a little help."

She nodded up the slope. Signora Docci, Harry, Edoardo and Grazia appeared on the crest above.

"Don't just bloody stand there," called Harry.

Signora Docci wagged her cane impatiently. "Quick, go and look, it won't last long."

The trough was filling fast, and they hurried down the steps to the grotto.

The water poured from Peneus' urn, filling the marble basin, overflowing into the gaping mouth of Flora set in the floor. It was beautiful, and it was an act of murder on open display.

They ran hand in hand through the pasture toward the Temple of Echo. The water was already flowing down the channel that scored the ground between the temple and the octagonal pool. Soon Narcissus would have a reason for staring so longingly into vacant space.

They set themselves down on a bench in the temple, shoulders pressed close, trying to suppress the sound of their labored breathing. Beneath the iron grille in the middle of the floor, the water fell into some kind of shallow receptacle. That's what it sounded like—a sound warped by the chamber beneath the floor, then hurled up through the grille toward the domed roof, scattering, echoing, filling the space, making the temple whole again.

Antonella had described the sound as being like whispers. She was right. But they were urgent whispers.

"It's different," said Antonella.

"What?"

"The sound."

"How?"

"I don't know."

It didn't matter. Flora had spoken, and Adam could hear what she was saying.

Maurizio wasn't at dinner. He sent his apologies with Chiara—he wasn't feeling well after the previous night's festivities. Adam tried to imagine the look on his face when Chiara returned with the news that Adam had delayed his departure. Signora Docci seemed more than happy that the purpose of the dinner had been undermined. Harry pointed out that he really was leaving for good in the morning, so the dinner had lost none of its true purpose.

The only farewell of Harry's that couldn't be postponed till the morning was the one with Antonella. He insisted on escorting her back to her farmhouse. Adam went along with them.

Antonella produced a bottle of cheap brandy, half of which they drank on the mound beside her barn, sprawled on cushions set around a couple of guttering candles.

When they finally left, Harry made the most of his goodbye hug with Antonella to get to know her body a bit better.

Picking their way back down through the olive grove, Harry said to Adam, "You can stay if you want."

"It's okay."

"Which means you did the dirty this afternoon."

Adam said nothing. Harry barged against him playfully.

"You're not getting anything out of me."

"Give up now, you know I will."

"Harry, what are you doing?"

"Chinese burn."

"Well, it's not working."

"Shit," said Harry, releasing Adam's wrist.

SIGNORA DOCCI SENT THEM OFF IN STYLE IN HER NAVY blue Lancia. They were driven by Foscolo, a man of few words. One of them was "Arrivederci," which he mumbled sullenly when he dropped them off at Santa Maria Novella station in Florence.

Adam bought a ticket to Arezzo to keep up appearances. He could exchange it later, once Harry was gone. There was an hour to kill before the train to Venice. They headed for the station bar, where Harry proposed they drink their way through the colors of the rainbow—a trick he'd picked up from the Swedish Finn.

"She lives just round the corner," said Harry wistfully.

"She's got a boyfriend."

"I doubt it, not anymore."

"You hardly know her. You're getting on that train."

"Okay. But the reds are on you."

Harry wasn't leaving empty-handed. The old tan leather suitcase, a gift from Signora Docci, was stuffed with many of Adam's clothes (which Maria, on her own initiative, had washed, dried and pressed in the space of one day). The only thing that Harry lacked was money. But when Adam handed him the greater part of his remaining cash, Harry produced a generous bundle from his own pocket, fanning it in the air.

"A commission."

"A commission?"

"From Signora Docci. She wants another sculpture. I guess she wasn't just being polite after all."

Adam leaned forward in his chair. "Harry, listen, she's a sly old bird, she knows she's getting you cheap."

Harry tilted his head in a strange fashion. "That's got to be about the nicest thing you've ever said to me." He lit a cigarette. "I didn't say before, didn't want to, and I can still pull out . . ." His voice trailed off.

"What?"

"There's a gallery in London, a good gallery, the Matthiessen Gallery . . . they want me to do a show."

"That's fantastic, Harry."

"It's set for April. Will you come?"

Adam winced. "April's bad, I'll be studying for my finals."

"Since when did you ever have to study for exams?"

"Of course I'll come!"

"I'm scared, Paddler. No—crapping myself."

"Of course you are. If it's a flop, you're ruined as a sculptor."

"Arsehole."

Judging from her expression, the middle-aged woman at the neighboring table was an English-speaker.

They only got as far as "green" before Harry had to head for his train. He secured a seat for himself in a compartment, then joined Adam on the platform for a farewell smoke.

"Weird times were had," said Harry.

"They were."

"And much fun."

"Yeah."

"We needed that, you and me."

"You're right, we did."

"She's a great girl, Paddler."

"She is."

"You look good together—I mean, she looks better than you, but you still look good together." He paused. "Don't mess it up."

"Why would I mess up?"

"I don't know." Harry glanced off, then back at Adam. "Something's going on, I don't know what, but I reckon you would have told me if you wanted to, if you wanted my help."

"Harry, nothing's—"

Harry waved him down. "Don't, it's insulting. I'm offering you my services." He gave a short snort of a laugh. "Not much of an offer, I know. Just say yes or no. I don't have to get on this train."

"No."

Harry scrutinized him closely, then nodded. "Okay."

"But thanks for asking."

The loneliness hit Adam the moment Harry's train edged out of the station. The kaleidoscope of Italian liqueurs mingling in his belly didn't help, nor did the fact that he missed the train to Viareggio by a matter of seconds, and with it being a Sunday he then had to wait two hours for the next one. He distracted himself with a gossipy magazine devoted to Italian cinema. He fought the urge to doze, fearful of what his unfettered thoughts might bring.

He lost the battle soon after the train cleared the depressing outskirts of Florence. Strangely, sleep proved to be a peaceful diversion. There was no warped and worrying analysis of what he was embarking on—this fool's errand—just momentary oblivion, his face pressed to the window, fields and farms sliding by outside.

Viareggio was an impressive town, its proud boardwalk backed by grand hotels, its beach a clean line of sand, the sunshades of its private lidos a colorful banded ribbon stretching off into the distance. It was high season and hot, and the place was alive, a definite whiff of wealth in the air. The women were beautiful, their men paunchy and confident, and Adam's immediate instinct was to head straight back to the station.

He found himself a cheap room well back from the sea front, beyond the large pine wood that cut through the town. He paced his room, smoking, building up courage. Then he headed outside into the blinding sunlight.

He remembered the name of the bar. There'd been no need to write it down. It had etched itself on his brain the moment Fausto mentioned it. Maybe he already knew then, sitting in the yard at Fausto's farmhouse, that he would find himself here in Viareggio, asking for directions to La Capannina.

If Gaetano the gardener really had come into some family money, then it was evidently a large legacy. La Capannina proved to be a two-story building in a prime spot on the front. It wasn't as imposing as the buildings that flanked it, but it was an architectural gem, a little art nouveau masterpiece. Set some distance back from the pavement, it had a terrace out front, fringed with exotic palms. A stone staircase climbed majestically to the main entrance, and the facade was stepped, allowing for a balcony terrace on the second floor running the full length of the building. The sea air had taken its toll on the place, but the scaling paintwork lent it an appealing air of shabby elegance.

Adam didn't venture beyond the front terrace, there was no need to, he would be returning later. He gathered from the waiter who brought him his drink that the upper floor was given over to a restaurant. He made a reservation on the upper terrace for dinner and was about to ask if the owner was around, when he checked himself. He mustn't do anything to jeopardize his role as an innocent tourist, a simple bird of passage who had alighted on this perch by pure chance.

Thanks to Harry's unexpected windfall, he could afford to indulge himself a little. He bought a beach towel and a pair of swimming trunks, then secured himself a patch of sand at a lido across the way. It came with a lounge chair, a beach umbrella and an unctuous waiter who kept trying to foist overpriced refreshments on him.

He lay there, staring at the jagged peaks of the mountains backing the narrow coastal plain—the same mountains that had offered up the gigantic block of white marble from which Michelangelo had hacked his "snake-hipped Narcissus." Harry's wonderfully dismissive phrase brought a smile to his face. It also brought to mind the aching void left by his brother's departure.

He hired a pedal boat and struck out for the horizon, leaving the beach far behind. But even then, the empty seat taunted him. He saw Antonella's lean legs pumping the vacant pedals beside him. They should be here together, a couple, like all the other couples, the ones he'd been seeing all day, the ones his eyes kept settling on. Instead, he was alone, working through the details of some reckless plan in his head. He drew consolation from the possibility that Gaetano was away on holiday, or that he was an absentee boss who rarely showed his face at La Capannina, and certainly never on a Sunday.

As he sat there bobbing on the light Mediterranean swell, a more pleasing picture began to fashion itself for him. He saw a fish dinner eaten in peace under the stars, followed by a stroll along the beach and a good night's sleep. He saw himself boarding the train back to Florence in the morning, secure in the knowledge that he'd given the thing his best shot.

"Eh, Gaetano, how's it going?"

They weren't the first words Adam heard on entering the bar of La Capannina several hours later, but he had yet to order his first drink when the fat man in the fawn linen suit uttered them. The fat man raised a pudgy paw. The thin man sitting with friends at a booth table in the far corner returned the gesture, giving a slight nod of his tanned head as he did so.

Gaetano was bald and had trimmed what remained of his hair close to his skull. He wasn't at all what Adam had expected. He was handsome, well dressed, composed. It was hard to imagine that he owed everything he was to his complicity in a murder. In fact, it was near impossible to keep any faith at all with the idea.

Adam had run imaginary conversations in his head, toying with ways of steering their exchange. He hadn't thought about the difficulties involved in actually getting to meet the fellow in the first place. He took a table and pondered the problem.

Gaetano hadn't moved from his booth in the corner by the time he went upstairs to eat.

It was a perfect night, the cooling sea breeze a welcome change from the windless humidity of the hills. Overhead, the stars cast a dirty stain across the sky. The smell of grilling fish mingled with the soft scent of pine trees and the earthy spice of cigar smoke wafting up from the terrace below. The white wine was crisp and dry, his shellfish starter a revelation. Under any other circumstances he would have lingered over his meal. Instead, he wolfed it down, eager to get back to the bar.

"Good evening."

Adam turned, saw Gaetano standing over him and froze in the act of raising the fork to his mouth. Was Maurizio that far ahead of him? Had he predicted Adam's next move and furnished Gaetano with a detailed description of the meddlesome Englishman?

"Are you enjoying your meal?" Gaetano inquired.

The clothes might have been discreetly elegant, but the hand that Adam shook spoke of a life spent working the soil.

"Yes. Thank you."

Gaetano nodded approvingly. "The best fish stew in Viareggio."

"Yes, it's excellent."

"Good. I'm pleased."

It was only as Gaetano moved on to the next table that Adam realized he'd been doing no more than performing his patronly duty, checking up on his customers, ensuring that all was well. He cursed himself for missing the opportunity to strike up a conversation.

Maybe the tour of the diners was Gaetano's last act before breaking for the night and heading home, because he was nowhere to be seen in the bar when Adam headed back downstairs. The two men Gaetano had been sitting with were still in the corner booth, slouched and nonchalant in their short sleeves, and they had been joined by an elderly man and a young woman, both of whom had evidently taken too much sun that day. A faint ray of hope came with the sight of a fifth wineglass on the table in front of them.

Adam was at the bar, waiting to order, when Gaetano appeared from a door behind the counter with a box of cigars. He exchanged a few words with one of the barmen, who set up a bottle of malt whisky and some glasses on a tray.

The moment a table came free, Adam pounced. He immersed himself in his book, happy to bide his time, ready to be the last to leave, if that's what it took. A while later, a woman placed her hand on the back of the chair opposite and asked in a sultry voice:

"Can I?"

She was tall, fine-featured, very attractive.

"Of course," said Adam, assuming that she wished to take the chair to another table. Instead, she lowered herself into it.

"Are you alone? Apart from that boring-looking book, I mean?"

"Er, yes."

"American?"

"English."

"On holiday?"

"Studying."

The woman slowly pulled a cigarette from her packet. "Is it your first time in Viareggio?"

"Yes."

"Where are you staying?"

"A pensione over there." He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the bar.

"Oh, that one." She flashed a smile. "I'm Alessandra."

"Adam."

"You have lovely eyes, Adam."

"Thank you." "Do you also have a light?" She waggled the unlit cigarette between her fingers.

"Of course. Excuse me." He fumbled for his lighter on the table.

"Leave the young man alone, Alessandra."

It was Gaetano.

"Oh, do I have to?" she pouted up at him.

"I'm afraid so."

Alessandra looked back at Adam. "The boss," she said with a mocking tone. "I think he wants you for himself."

"Very funny, Alessandra."

Alessandra leaned across the table, smiled sweetly and raised the cigarette to her lips. Adam lit it for her. "Spoilsport," she muttered to Gaetano as she sashayed off.

The only explanation Adam could come up with was that she worked in the world's oldest profession, and the management didn't want her plying her trade under their roof. He was wrong.

"Alessandra used to be Alessandro," Gaetano explained.

It took Adam a moment to assimilate the news. The timbre of the voice had been the only giveaway.

"Really?"

Gaetano smiled at Adam's incredulity. "There have been . . . difficulties with some of the customers."

It was now or never.

"Can I offer you a drink? As a thank you, I mean."

Gaetano hesitated. "Sure." He shrugged.

Adam opted for a twelve-year-old single-malt Scotch. Gaetano nodded his approval and followed suit.

He sensed he had just the one drink in which to hook his fish or Gaetano would be off, back to his booth. He'd already settled on flattery as his opening gambit, and the tactic worked. Gaetano thanked him for his compliments about La Capannina, and was disarmingly humble in his reply. The building provided the great atmosphere, the chef the great food—he was just the owner. Some of this humility deserted him when he went on to explain that he had reversed the sliding fortunes of the place in under a year, and to such an extent that the previous owner was now kicking himself over the sale price. He had even approached Gaetano on the subject of buying back a stake in the business.

It was the book that clinched it, though, just as Adam thought it would. It was a big work on Italian Renaissance sculpture, loaded with pictures, and it didn't go unnoticed by Gaetano. When Adam explained that he was an art history student, Gaetano confessed to knowing a little about sculptures from that period. He mentioned a garden he knew—a garden attached to a grand villa near Florence. He talked about it as if stumbling across such a thing was one of the hazards you faced when mixing in the sort of circles he did. He certainly didn't say that he had spent a sizable chunk of his life cutting the garden's grass and pruning its laurel.

When Gaetano offered up a detailed and impressively vivid description of the garden, Adam found himself experiencing a strange sympathy for the man. The slightly desolate look that stole into his round, simian eyes suggested that years of exposure to the garden's unsettling atmosphere had also taken their toll on him.

Remembering his role, Adam reacted with enthusiasm, especially to the news that Flora, the goddess of flowers, was the linchpin of the cycle. He told Gaetano about Edgar Wind's new theory, published earlier that year, that not only did Flora figure in Botticelli's Primavera and his Birth of Venus but that her pairing with Venus was essential to the allegory of love buried in both paintings.

He had to hold himself in check when Gaetano quizzed him about the other sculptures in the garden. It was too easy to shine, too easy to give himself away. He shared a few further insights, just enough to impress. It seemed to do the trick. It was Gaetano who ordered the next round.

The bar had started to empty by the time the third round hit the table, and they were deep in a discussion about the war. It was Adam who had steered the conversation this way, looking for a tear in the tissue of lies that shrouded Gaetano's account of his life. He claimed to have been a partisan, which might or might not have been true, although it seemed unlikely. When he said he had witnessed bad things, Adam pressed him further. Gaetano wouldn't be drawn on the subject, except to say that war made monsters of men—good men, men of standing, men you thought you knew— he'd seen it with his own eyes.

Adam said he'd hardly witnessed anything of the war other than the odd plane overhead—the privilege of growing up on a remote farm, he lied. Casting himself as a country boy had the desired effect. Gaetano confessed to being one too, and he had a storehouse of tedious anecdotes to prove it. This new turn in their conversation also allowed him to hold forth on his favorite subject: land.

He was obsessed with it. Land equaled power. History proved it. And if land was the past, then it was also the future. Italy was changing. The ownership of land was being opened up to a wider constituency. Only a fool could fail to appreciate the opportunities this presented.

"I'm going to give you some advice," said Gaetano, leaning across the table, his eyes dimmed with drink. "You know the real reason you should buy land?" He paused for effect. "Because they can't make any more of it."

The man's boorish self-satisfaction was almost unbearable, but Adam managed to look impressed by the statement. "I hadn't thought of it like that."

"That's why I'm telling you."

Adam saw his opening and pounced. Land brought heavy responsibilities, he countered. It also incited passions, not all of them good. He'd seen it with his own family. Ownership of the farm had split his father's generation, dividing siblings, turning them against each other. On one occasion it had even come to blows between his father and his uncle.

"Blows?" snorted Gaetano. "I've known brothers to kill over it."

Adam feigned a doubtful look.

"It's true. You don't believe me?"

"Really?"

"Murder. All because of a big house and some land."

A heavy silence followed. Gaetano clearly felt he had said too much, and Adam didn't need to hear anymore. He had his confirmation.

The arrival of two more whiskies helped them draw a line under this chapter of their conversation, with Gaetano more than happy to return to the subject of his plans for world domination. He prattled on drunkenly about a big hotel just down the road that he had his eye on. It was ripe for improvement, the only problem being that his reputation now preceded him, and the owner was therefore likely to ask the fullest possible price for the place. He had toyed with the idea of purchasing it through an intermediary in order to throw the fellow off the scent. He had also set his sights on a villa estate in the hills above Pisa. It belonged to an old family who had fallen on hard times, but he would probably hold off for a bit. Better to build up the business first. Estates were thirsty, they required a steady flow of cash, he knew that from experience. Then there was marriage. Marriage was good for business and he had held out long enough. Maybe it was time to throw in the towel and make an honest woman of some young creature.

This unpalatable mix of astonishing self-importance and craven insecurity was almost too much for Adam to stomach, but he still managed to joke that when he next returned to Italy he expected to find Gaetano married and master of his very own Villa Docci above Pisa.

Gaetano didn't react immediately. When he did, it was only to excuse himself for a moment. He needed to relieve himself.

Adam only realized his mistake as Gaetano stepped away from the table. Earlier in their conversation Gaetano had talked at some length about Villa Docci, but he had never mentioned it by name.

Or had he? Maybe he had. Maybe Adam was just being paranoid. A quick glance confirmed that he wasn't.

It wasn't exactly a nod, just the merest tilt of the head, but something about it suggested the uncontrollable reflex when the eyes have just made an urgent gesture all of their own. Adam couldn't see Gaetano's eyes, but he could see the two young men in short sleeves get up from the corner booth and follow him toward the back of the room.

Adam fumbled some notes onto the table in settlement of the drinks bill and, cursing himself for the precious moments his manners had cost him, hurried for the main doors. The front terrace was all but deserted, so was the boardwalk across the way. Sunday night was not the night for losing yourself in a crowd.

He turned right, picking up the pace as La Capannina fell behind his shoulder. He turned right again into the first street, heading away from the sea. His mind was racing. It was telling him he should have turned into the second street. The first street was so bloody predictable. He started to run, casting a wild look behind him. His ankle, stiff and sore, had not fully recovered from the fall in the garden. Walking was fine, a sprint something quite different. Fortunately, the safety of the park and its dark pine woods lay no more than a hundred and fifty yards off. He slowed to a walk as he neared the end of the street, checking over his shoulder. All clear behind still. He was safe.

He glanced left and right before crossing the broad street to the park. He was checking for traffic. What he saw was two men in short-sleeved shirts career from the mouth of the adjacent street. They spotted him immediately.

He sprinted across the road and was swallowed up by the shadows.

The ground beneath the trees was uneven, sandy, treacherous, and the broad canopies of the umbrella pines allowed almost no moonlight to filter through to it. He stumbled and fell twice in quick succession. The second time, he pitched forward into a dry ditch, winding himself. He heard his pursuers closing from behind, communicating in urgent tones. They had the advantage over him—this was their home turf.

He changed tack, cutting left, staying low, one hand in his pocket to stop the coins jangling, the other clutching the book on Renaissance sculpture. He thought about abandoning it but decided it might come in handy as a weapon, a last resort, something to hurl at them.

He had always prided himself on never having spent a minute more on a playing field than had been absolutely required by the various schools he'd attended. Staggering around a frozen rugby pitch or having small and very hard balls hurled at you had never been his idea of fun. He had spent much of his youth faking injuries or a staggering ignorance of the rules—anything that might see him ejected from the field of play. Play? That wasn't play. It was mortification of the flesh. He didn't mind tennis, especially doubles, when he could take up a position at the net and swat at anything that came his way. Nothing that involved overexertion or, God forbid, stamina.

All the disparaging comments about sporty types came back to haunt him now. His lungs sucked greedily at the warm night air, blood beat a wild tattoo in his ears, and his legs felt strangely distant. Only the fear drove him on. It was a new kind of fear, one he had never experienced before, except in nightmares. It was the kind that prickled the skin of your thighs and your shoulders. Run or stand and fight, your body seemed to be saying to you: a stark and alarming choice.

At a certain point he had to stop, he could go no farther. He dropped into some shrubs, pressing his face into the sandy soil, his fingers groping in the darkness for a better weapon to wield than a learned tome on Renaissance sculpture. He felt stripped bare, every action base and primitive, inborn. The same body that had let him down now came to his aid, helping him to control his labored breathing, sharpening his hearing.

All he could pick up was the muted drone of distant vehicles. That was good, because the ground was spongy with pine needles and fallen twigs, impossible to move across without generating some kind of noise. He must have given them the slip. He waited five minutes, waited another five for good measure, then he crept from his lair.

Stealth suited his style. It also blunted the blind, headlong panic of before. He moved cautiously, sticking to thick vegetation, stopping every so often to listen for telltale sounds, avoiding any areas where the moonlight cleaved the darkness. When obliged to cross a path, he would halt, wait, checking first that the coast was clear.

He traveled a fair distance like this before reaching the clearing. It was large and ovoid, and through the dense belt of trees just beyond it he could make out the lights of the buildings on the north side of the park. He thought about skirting the open space. If he had, he would have walked straight into the arms of the enemy. Because it was from the tree line off to his left that the man exploded the moment he began padding across the clearing in a low crouch.

"I've got him, he's here, I've got him!"

Adam surprised himself with the burst of speed he put on, the pain in his ankle forgotten. He might even have made it to safety if he hadn't collided with a tree.

He reeled backward, stunned. He was aware of the book falling from his hand, and of the fact that it had cost him four shillings from a dusty shop just off the Charing Cross Road. Then something hurtled into him from behind, driving the air from his lungs and sending him sprawling.

The man wasn't big. He didn't need to be. He was brutal. He kept Adam subdued with a few well-placed kicks until his companion arrived. Together, they hauled him to his feet.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"What?" he said groggily, in English.

He was jerked, spun around and hurled against a tree. He cracked the back of his skull against the trunk, staggered but didn't fall. This meant that they didn't have to pick him up before seizing him by the arms and running him headlong into another tree.

For a moment, the world receded from him. When it flooded back in, he found himself on the ground, clutching his head, his palm sticky with blood.

"Who the fuck are you?" spat one of the shadows looming over him.

He cowered, raising his arms protectively above his head. "No," he said pathetically, tearfully, convinced now that he was pleading for his life, that they would keep piling him into trees until he was nothing but pulp.

He never got to know if that really was their intention.

There was a sound like the snapping of a branch and the shadow on the left pitched forward onto him. By the time he had scrabbled out from beneath the dead weight, it was almost all over for number two. He was on the ground, yelping in pain as blows rained down on him. The assailant had some kind of instrument in his hand, hard to make out in the darkness, and with blood sheeting into his eyes.

Suddenly, there was silence. He heard his rescuer breathing heavily.

"Go," snapped a gruff voice. "Get lost!"

He didn't require any more encouragement; the first man was already beginning to stir.

Stumbling off through the trees, he heard the sound of a couple more blows finding their mark. He also became aware of the dampness between his legs.

SIGNORA OLIVOTTO AT THE PENSIONE RAVIZZA PROVED TO be something of a saint. She took him into her apartment and cleaned and dressed his wounds. When she suggested he remove his trousers so that she could clean them, she mentioned the dirty stains at the knees, not the wet patch around the crotch. She even pretended to believe his story that he'd tackled two men who had tried to pick his pocket.

"Well, you're going to have a scar to remember your bravery by," she said archly.

The cut in his eyebrow was not so long, but it was deep. When it refused to stop bleeding, a doctor was summoned. He shaved one part of the eyebrow, administered three stitches and two aspirin, and then categorically refused payment. Signora Olivotto must already have solicited the doctor's discretion, because he never once asked how Adam had come by his injuries.

The pain in his head and ribs made for a terrible night's sleep. So did the thought of two men lying bludgeoned to death in the park by his mysterious savior. What would have happened if the shadowy stranger hadn't come to his rescue? And who was he? Was it possible that he was connected in some way? Or had he simply stumbled upon the fracas and done the right thing by the weaker party? They were imponderable questions. There was also the matter of his book on Renaissance sculpture, abandoned at the scene, his name scrawled on the flyleaf. A calm and reasoned assessment of his predicament threw up only one solution: Get out of Viareggio as quickly as possible.

Signora Olivotto had washed his trousers and left them out to dry overnight. They were still damp in the morning, although they quickly dried off in the early sunlight. He took breakfast in his room so as to avoid the stares of the other guests, his left eye now badly swollen.

Realizing that he couldn't leave town without knowing for sure, he slipped out of the pensione and hurried to the park.

He wasn't able to identify the exact spot, but he made a thorough sweep of the patch of woodland where the confrontation had occurred. There were no dead bodies and no police cordons sealing off a crime scene. He didn't find his book, but he did feel his spirits lift a little as he limped back to the pensione.

Signora Olivotto ordered a taxi to take him to the station. The moment it pulled away, he redirected the driver to the first stop down the line. He wasn't going to risk boarding the train in Viareggio itself. If Gaetano had any sense, he'd be waiting for him there.

It was a small station, and the train that stopped at it also stopped at every other small station between Viareggio and Florence. This was fine by Adam. It gave him plenty of time to think.

Rattling along through the shimmering heat of the Arno valley, it dawned on him that his one night in Viareggio had changed everything. The search for the truth behind Emilio's death was no longer a private affair, one to be pursued in secret. He had lost the initiative. Gaetano must surely have contacted Maurizio by now. He had to assume, therefore, that they'd worked out exactly who he was and why he'd traveled to Viareggio.

At first he chided himself for the silly slip of the tongue that had led to his exposure. His thinking had changed by the time the train pulled into Santa Maria Novella station.

So what if they knew? What if things had gone according to plan? He would be stepping off the train, his suspicions confirmed, and wondering just what the hell to do next. He had been nai've. Discovering the truth was never going to be enough of an end in itself. There was always going to be a confrontation of some sort with Maurizio. Viareggio had simply hastened the inevitable.

MARIA WAS THE FIRST TO SET EYES ON ADAM. THE moment she did so, her hand shot to her mouth. She took him to the kitchen and listened to his (now embellished) account of the set-to with the pickpockets. She insisted on removing the bandage and examining the wound in his eyebrow. The doctor's needlework was decreed "adequate," although an extra stitch wouldn't have gone amiss. She rested a consoling hand on his arm and asked him if there was anything he wanted. She made him a coffee, then dispatched him upstairs with instructions to have a bath and change his clothes before lunch.

As he stood staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, three thoughts occurred to him in quick succession: he looked truly terrible, dirty and damaged; it was good to be back at Villa Docci; and Maria had shown him more warmth in the last fifteen minutes than she'd managed to muster during his entire stay.

He wasn't surprised to find Maurizio seated at the table on the terrace when he came down to lunch. Maurizio's reaction was no less predictable. It matched his mother's for horror and surprise and furrow-browed sympathy. Adam spent much of the meal trying to reach Maurizio, to extract from him a look, something, anything that suggested they both knew that his story of pickpockets in Arezzo was a ringing lie.

It was a faultless performance by Maurizio. Adam was able to spend much of his time admiring it, because he never doubted for a moment that it was a performance. As the meal wore on, however, he began to worry. Maurizio would have quizzed Gaetano closely; he would know that Gaetano had not let slip Maurizio's name to Adam. All Maurizio had to do was brazen it out, make no reference at all to Viareggio, and Adam would be hamstrung, left with nothing more than a broken chain of circumstantial evidence.

This is what Maurizio should have done, so Adam was surprised when he showed up in the study soon after lunch. He entered from the library, shutting the door behind him. He also closed the French windows leading onto the terrace.

Adam was at the desk, reading. He hadn't absorbed one word of the book. He had been praying for Maurizio to make just such a blunder.

Maurizio lit a cigarette. "Gaetano sends his apologies."

Silence seemed the best tactic.

"Who was the man in the park?"

So that was it. Seeking Adam out wasn't a blunder on Maurizio's part; it was an act of necessity. He needed to know if Adam was working alone. He needed to know just what he was up against.

"I don't know. It was dark, I didn't even see his face."

Maurizio's eyes narrowed, studying him closely. "I believe you." He wandered to the fireplace and flicked some ash into the grate. "I don't know what you think you know, but let me tell you how it is. I know Gaetano, of course I do. We all do. When he left last year, he asked me to help him in his business." He gave a wry smile. "No, he asked to borrow some money. I said no, and then I saw La Capannina and I said yes. I thought it was a good investment. And it is. The arrangement between us is very complicated. I'll be honest, it is not exactly legal. This makes him very sensitive. It makes us both very sensitive. I'm sorry you suffered because of it. But that's all it is—a business arrangement."

He had to hand it to Maurizio, it was a nice try, offering up an explanation that would allow Adam to walk away from the affair with a clean conscience.

But he was beyond that now. He had changed. They had hurt him. They had scared him. No, they had made him piss himself with fear, thinking he was about to die.

"You're lying," he said. "I know you're lying, you know you're lying. You killed Emilio, and when Gaetano saw what you'd done you had to buy his silence. Maybe you're still buying it. Did Gaetano tell you about his plans? He has big plans—money no object—your money, I imagine."

He was surprised it hadn't occurred to him before that the relationship was one of ongoing blackmail, that Gaetano had raised the price on Maurizio with La Capannina. It was a gratifying thought that Maurizio really had been paying for his crime for the past fourteen years.

Maurizio's expression hovered somewhere between pity and amusement. "Is that what you think? That I killed my own brother? Are you mad?"

He tossed his cigarette into the fireplace and approached the desk. He was no longer amused.

"You come here and you tell me this? You dare to tell me this? I was there." He stabbed his finger against his chest. "I was there. I saw that German shoot Emilio. I saw him walk up to him and shoot him again in the head." He made a pistol of his fingers and "fired" at the ground. "And I did nothing. Nothing. I watched. If doing nothing means I killed him, then yes—I killed him."

It wasn't the tears welling in Maurizio's eyes that unsettled Adam, it was the pistol-fingers he had pointed at the ground. That explained the bullet hole in the floor upstairs—a detail of the shooting Chiara had failed to mention to him, and which Adam had blithely taken as proof of Maurizio's hand in his brother's death.

It was the cornerstone of his case—his only piece of hard, physical evidence—and Maurizio had whipped it away with one simple gesture. The whole ramshackle structure of the conspiracy he had built now came crashing down around his ears.

"Well . . . ?"

"I'm sorry," Adam replied quietly.

"You're sorry!?"

"Yes."

Maurizio spun away from the desk, exasperated. "Is that all you can say?"

"I'll leave."

"Yes, you will."

"Now?"

"Tomorrow morning, as you planned. I don't want to make a scene for my mother."

Adam nodded. Maurizio shot him a contemptuous look and stalked out of the room.

He made his way upstairs in a daze, shaky and light-headed. He tried to marshal his thoughts but they scattered off in all directions like a rioting mob, leaving him to poke around in the ruins of his argument.

He found himself in his room, unpacking then repacking the suitcases he'd prepared before leaving for the coast.

Why couldn't he think straight? The close chain of his reasoning was usually the one thing he could rely on. Maybe he was in shock. Yes, that was it. Or concussed. The doctor in Viareggio had warned him he might be.

He was right about one thing: Viareggio had indeed brought matters to a head, forcing a confrontation with Maurizio. He gave a quick and manic laugh. It was about the only thing he had been right about.

At least it was over now, done with. He was in no condition to take the thing any further, even if he had wanted to. Which he didn't. He wanted to leave. He would have phoned for a taxi there and then, but even that seemed like a task too far.

He lowered himself into the overstuffed armchair near the fireplace, wincing as he did so. They had really worked him over beneath the pines in Viareggio. Something was badly wrong with his ribs. There was a sharp and unfamiliar edge to the pain, worrying. And as for the throbbing in his skull, the aspirins barely brushed the surface of it.

He was a wreck, inside and out. He had never been brought this low in all his life. Like Dante, he had finally reached the ninth circle of Hell.

No. It was a false comparison to draw. Because Dante's journey had not ended there, deep in the abyss. He had risen up through Purgatory and on into Paradise, guided by the ghost of his dead love, Beatrice.

He dwelt on this thought for a while, then heaved himself up out of the armchair and made for the door, every step a discomfort.

Something told him to turn back before he got there. It was exactly this—his cockeyed belief in his own spectral guide—that had brought him to his current predicament. Strangely, though, it no longer mattered to him if he was the dupe of his own diseased fancy. He was too far gone to care.

He felt oddly calm as he edged his way through the gap in the high yew hedge. In fact, it was the first time he had ever entered the memorial garden free of any apprehension or disquiet, he realized. Maybe it was the pain racking his body. It was certainly the closest thing he had ever experienced to what she must have felt at the end.

Whatever curious affinity he had cooked up for himself and Flora, she was having none of it.

She offered no solace, just a blank and stony stare.

He told himself not to lose heart. She had done this to him before, rebuffing his advances, then allowing him close. Antonella and Harry had both sensed it in her—she liked to tease. She was exactly as Federico had cast her in stone all those centuries ago.

He walked the circuit slowly, aware that it was the last time he would ever do so. He waited and hoped. In vain. Half an hour later he found himself back at the amphitheater, dejected, rejected, his final tour complete.

He ran his fingers over the inscription on the stone bench: anima fit sedendo et quiescendo prudentior. The Soul in Repose Grows Wiser. Yet another clue left by Federico Docci. How many had he left in all? Just the right amount for his crime to go undetected for almost four hundred years. It was an impressive piece of judgment on Federico's part—worthy of admiration, even—and it was easy to picture Federico applying the same rigorous subtlety to the murders themselves. Why else had he not been brought to account? He saw Federico nursing his ailing wife till the bitter end, the distraught husband, perfectly in character. And he saw Maurizio, the distraught brother, squeezing out a tear to deflect the suspicions of a stranger.

That's how good you had to be to get away with it.

He was alert now, in the grip of a new clarity, the implacable logic tightening around him.

Maurizio knew for a fact that Adam had visited the top floor, because Maria had told him so. He might well have assumed, therefore, that Adam had discovered the bullet hole in the wooden boards and that he'd recognized it for what it was—the linchpin of a case against Maurizio. All Maurizio had to do was remove the pin and the wheel would fall off.

Maurizio was still in character, playing a role. Short of killing Adam, what else could he do other than talk his way out of suspicion? There was to be no confession, not even the slightest admission of guilt.

An innocent man would not have shown up for dinner. Offended by the wild accusations leveled at him, he would have snubbed Adam on his last night at Villa Docci.

Adam waited, baited his hook, and when an opportunity presented itself, made a last desperate cast. This he did in the cellar, where Maurizio had gone to select the wine for the meal, and where Adam joined him moments later.

"I'm sorry."

Maurizio turned. "Yes, you said."

"I just have one more question, though."

"Don't do this."

"What happened to the gun?"

"What gun?"

"Emilio's gun."

"My father destroyed it."

"Really?"

"That's what he said."

"Did you see him do it?"

He wasn't afraid to push; a guilty man couldn't afford to push back. And Maurizio didn't. He examined the label of a dusty bottle and made for the door. "I think we should join my mother," he said flatly.

"She knows what he did with the gun. And with the bullets he took from the body."

An innocent man would have carried on walking, not stopped and turned at the door.

"That's right, he had the bullets removed. They're behind the plaque in the chapel—Emilio's plaque—along with the gun. Your father put them there. Your mother thinks it was the act of a man losing his mind. I think he knew. I think he worked out what happened up there."

Maurizio's eyes were impossible to read, sunk in two pools of shadow cast by the bare overhead bulb.

"You say you did nothing. He did nothing. Not then. But he did leave clues. And he did leave proof—ballistic proof that Emilio was shot with his own gun." He paused. "If you don't believe me, ask your mother."

"Oh I believe you," said Maurizio evenly. "If she told you they are there, they are there. But why do I care? I don't. I only care that you leave this place."

Dinner, inevitably, was a living hell. The worst thing was the abrupt farewell with Antonella, who clearly wanted to make more of their last evening together. What could he do, though? He had no choice. The moment Maurizio excused himself and headed back to the house by the farm, he too was obliged to call it a night. It wasn't hard using his injuries as an excuse, but it was hard enacting an emotional farewell with Antonella when his mind was on other matters altogether.

They kissed by her car, resolved to write to each other, and that was it—she was gone.

HE HAS TO COME. HE HAS TO COME.

It was an annoying and persistent little mantra. He would shake it out of his head only for it to barge its way back in again a few minutes later.

After fighting it for three hours, he wasn't just bored, he was exhausted. And hurting. The aspirins were wearing off. It didn't help that he was hunched in a tight recess at the back of the altar.

He unfolded himself from his hiding place and lay flat on the stone floor, arms at his side. It struck him that he was not alone, that both Flora and Emilio lay close by, stretched out in exactly the same fashion, and it gave him comfort.

He stared at the roof, barely discernible in the faint light from the lone candle on the altar—just a dim mesh of beams and crossbeams. He imagined it being built, men high overhead on wooden scaffolds, hammering the structure into being, the blue vault of a summer sky above them.

He closed his eyes, picturing it, and felt himself drifting off to sleep. He snapped upright, shunted himself back beneath the altar, huddling on his haunches, knees against his chest.

He has to come. He has to come.

Maybe he's already been, then gone away. Maybe he saw the ladder lying on the ground against the wall of the chapel, the one pushed over by Adam after he'd clambered through the window. It had been an awkward maneuver, but a necessary one, Maurizio being unlikely to enter the chapel unless the door was locked from the outside, the key safely beneath its rock.

Christ, he wanted a cigarette. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gone so many waking hours without one. There was that production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, over three hours of excruciating student overacting unbroken by an interval, although the blond girl from Newnham playing Hedda had been very easy on the eye. What was her name again? She had a brother at Corpus Christi with a claret-stain birthmark on his neck . . .

He was awakened by a rasping noise. He recognized it immediately as the mechanism of an old lock groaning in protest. He stiffened, straining his ears. He heard the creak of hinges. And then whispers.

He hadn't come alone! He'd brought someone with him. Or something. Something shuffling, scampering. A dog padding around, getting its bearings, sniffing out the dog-history of the place. Not good. Bad.

A male voice hissed a command, calling the animal to heel. But for how long? A flashlight beam cut through the darkness, making a quick sweep of the interior, casting the shadow of the altar against the back wall.

Adam cowered. He hadn't entered the chapel through the door, so there was no scent for the dog to pick up on, not unless it went wandering. He knew the dog—a collie with a bunch of other stuff thrown in, young and skittish, but hardly an attack dog. He could remember being pleasantly surprised that Maurizio and Chiara didn't feel the need for a pedigree animal.

Another sound now, off to his left. A bag of tools being laid on the ground. A hand rummaging inside. Then silence. Followed by a scraping noise. Maurizio working away at the join around the plaque. Best to wait awhile before surprising him.

The dog had other ideas.

He didn't see it until it appeared right in front of him, wagging its tail and panting. Good game, but I found you, it seemed to be saying.

He tried to push it away. It licked his hand and let out a small yelp.

"Ugo."

Definitely Maurizio's voice.

Ugo gave a couple of merry barks and the flashlight beam swung around to the altar.

Adam cut his losses and crawled out from his hiding place, squinting into the light. He turned on his own flashlight and fired it at Maurizio's face, blinding him back. After a moment's standoff, they both lowered their beams toward the floor.

Adam stroked Ugo's head, a gesture intended to give the impression that he was relaxed and in control. Maurizio's body was braced as if for a fight, his face as pale as ashes. The screwdriver in his hand looked far from innocent.

"Why are you here?" he asked darkly.

"I don't know."

"Why?" insisted Maurizio.

"I didn't have a choice. I had to find out."

Maurizio turned suddenly and used the screwdriver to prize the plaque free of the wall. His torch revealed nothing behind other than bare, raw stone. There was certainly no gun, and no bullets.

"Very clever," muttered Maurizio. "Very clever."

Instinct told Adam to keep his own confusion to himself. Where the hell was the gun?

Maurizio sat himself down on the end of a pew. There was something defeated about his body language that Adam found hard to square with the man, so he kept his distance.

"Well, now you know."

"Why?" asked Adam. "He was your brother."

"It happened. I don't have to explain to you."

"Because of all of this ... a house, some land?" He wanted to believe that something else had played a part—a clash of ideologies, anything other than simple greed.

"But you made sure. With his own gun?"

Maurizio didn't reply; he stared at his hands, as if they alone had been to blame for his actions.

"Where was Gaetano?"

"He arrived as the Germans were leaving. He was coming upstairs when he heard the shots." Maurizio raised his head and added flatly, "There's nothing you can do."

"I can tell your mother."

"Yes. And she will do nothing."

"How do you know?"

"Because I won't permit her to."

"Oh really?" scoffed Adam.

A slyness crept into Maurizio's smile. "You're an intelligent boy—work it out."

Even in the half-light Adam could make out the cold and creeping cunning in his eyes. Maurizio seemed to be saying he was ready to add matricide to fratricide, if that's what the situation called for.

"It's your decision."

Ugo's sudden bark sounded like a triumphant cry, applause for the brilliance of his master's devilish strategy.

"Zitto," spat Maurizio. But Ugo had no intention of remaining silent. He barked again, bounding toward the door of the chapel.

Maurizio moved with impressive speed, but the door still swung open before he got there.

Maria stepped into the chapel, shielding her eyes from the glare of Maurizio's flashlight.

"Maria ..."

Maria pulled the door shut behind her, her face set in stone. "I heard everything."

Maurizio's eyes flicked back and forth between her and Adam, searching for a connection. Adam could have told him there was none, if Maurizio hadn't figured it out for himself.

"What are you doing here?"

"Listening."

"Who for? My mother?"

Maria didn't reply, but her silence seemed to speak to Maurizio.

"Who, then?" he asked. "Antonella?"

Again, Adam saw nothing in Maria's face that constituted an answer. Maurizio clearly knew how to read her better. "Of course ... she knows it will come to her if I don't get it," he said, his tone suggesting that the pieces were now falling into place for him.

Adam, on the other hand, was struggling to keep up, his mind reeling, trying to process the information.

He gave up the fight when Maurizio added, "Whatever she's giving you, I'll give you more." "She's giving me a lot."

"It's nothing."

Maria took her time before replying. "I want a house of my own. Not an apartment. And I want money."

"How much?"

"Enough so I don't ever have to worry again."

"It's yours," said Maurizio.

Adam didn't intend to speak. The English words just exited his mouth. "Maria, what are you doing?"

She glanced at him, her expression ashamed but resolute. "What about him?" she asked Maurizio.

"What can he do? He's leaving tomorrow. He already knows he has no choice."

Maria nodded again and made for the door.

"Maria . . ." pleaded Adam.

She stopped and turned. "What? Who are you? What do you know? You know nothing." She thrust a finger toward the villa. "All my life my father worked for her, and what did he get? Nothing. What will I get? Nothing. That is the way it is. All I want is to die beneath my own roof and pay for my own funeral. Is that so much to ask? Well, is it!?"

Maurizio made a calming gesture with his hands.

"Who are you?" Maria went on. "You're a child. You know nothing."

In the silence that followed her departure, Adam reached out a hand to steady himself against a pew. It wasn't enough. He had to sit down.

Maria was right. He knew nothing. He was entirely out of his depth. He looked up to see Maurizio standing over him, nothing triumphant in his look, just a quiet certainty.

They left the chapel together. Maurizio locked the door and placed the key in his pocket. He raised his face toward the stars, then turned his gaze on Adam. "I mean what I said about my mother. It's your decision."

Sleep was out of the question. He didn't even try. He sat on the terrace and chain-smoked. Bewilderment and an overwhelming sense of his own naïveté battled for possession of his head. He was unable to absorb what he'd witnessed. He knew there had been a trade—Maria had sold her silence for a hefty price—but what was all the talk of Antonella?

She knows it will come to her if I don't get it.

He hadn't misunderstood Maurizio's words. Or Maria's response to them. He ran their exchange over and over in his head— feverishly testing it, challenging it—until the creeping dawn light had dimmed all but the brightest stars. Then he got to his feet.

Nearing the farmhouse, he stopped briefly to admire the new sun stretching its pale fingers over the hills. If he hadn't delayed for that moment, he would have been walking across the yard, caught in the open, when the door at the top of the outside staircase swung open and Fausto stepped from the farmhouse.

Adam dipped out of sight behind the corner of the barn. Fausto! It wasn't possible. He resisted the urge to check, certain that his eyes hadn't deceived him, wishing that they had. What was Fausto doing creeping from Antonella's house at dawn?

He hurried around the back of the barn. From the corner of the farm buildings he had a broken view through a cluster of cypresses on the track leading to San Casciano. Fausto passed along it, grave and pensive, slightly stooped. Adam followed, sticking to the trees.

Fearing detection, he was obliged to fall behind when Fausto reached the outskirts of San Casciano. Twice he almost lost him in the labyrinth of streets. The third time, he did lose him, but by then he had a pretty clear idea of where Fausto was headed.

The Pensione Amorini wasn't yet open for business. The shuttered windows of the ground floor allowed him to skirt the building undetected. He slipped into the back garden through the door in the stone wall. The kitchen was at the rear of the building, its windows giving directly onto the garden.

He could hear voices and the clatter of crockery. Peering cautiously around the window frame, he saw Signora Fanelli loading up a tray with plates and bowls. Her back was to Adam, which meant he had a clear view of Fausto's left hand resting lightly on her arse. Signora Fanelli turned her head and kissed Fausto briefly on the lips.

He walked to the bar in the Piazza Cavour as if in a trance. His head throbbed, his ribs pulsed with pain, and he was jittery from lack of sleep. Unsurprisingly, the coffee didn't help.

He picked over the evidence of his own eyes, desperate to find fault with it. He couldn't. Antonella had claimed not to know Fausto, yet she clearly did know him. Signora Fanelli and Fausto's relationship had appeared to be one of vague acquaintance, yet there was obviously much more to it than that.

Slowly, strand by sticky strand, the web they had spun to ensnare him came into focus. He couldn't see all of it, but he could see enough of it. Fausto was the key. It was Fausto who had first fired his suspicions about Maurizio with an apparently throwaway comment two weeks before. Fausto had backtracked, yes, but just enough to remove suspicion from himself while keeping Adam's interest alive. La Capannina in Viareggio had come from Fausto, just as the key to the top-floor rooms had come from Antonella. Christ, she had played it well, refusing him once before offering it up. And why had she offered herself up to him at the thermal spring? Because she thought he was leaving the next day? Because his work wasn't done yet, and she needed him to stay? The answer was obvious, impossible to ignore.

Maria too had played her part, fueling tensions with Maurizio, raising the temperature. There had been no need to tell Maurizio about Adam's visit to the top-floor rooms, but she had done so. According to Signora Docci, it had also been Maria's idea that Adam wear Emilio's dinner jacket to the party, the cause of yet more antagonism with Maurizio.

The evidence stacked up by itself. Almost every memory he turned to supported the case against them. Even his seduction by Signora Fanelli could be made to fit, and he felt sick to the pit of his stomach when he thought about it. He had been guided and steered since his very first night in San Casciano.

But why him? He had figured it out by the time he'd drained another cup of coffee.

Maurizio needed to be exposed, dethroned, if Villa Docci was to pass down Antonella's branch of the family. She had evidently set her heart on the place, but all she had to work with were her suspicions about Maurizio's involvement in Emilio's death. She also knew that Maurizio was far too wary to fall into a trap laid directly by her. So she'd used a puppet. She had pulled the strings and Adam had danced. And everything had gone according to plan until the very last moment.

This was the only consolation in the affair—Maria's betrayal. Antonella hadn't banked on Maurizio outbidding her as the hammer came down. She had underestimated him. Maria, older and wiser, hadn't.

He carried this pleasing thought with him as he strode briskly along the track back to Antonella's farmhouse.

She wasn't there. Nor was her car. Both were gone. It was no bad thing. He would only have screamed at her. Or worse.

He made do with snatching up a rock from the roadside and hurling it through her kitchen window.

The farewells were absurd, Signora Docci the only unrehearsed actor in the farce. Knowing the stakes were high, Adam played his part to innocent perfection. So did Maria. Her eyes even misted with tears as she kissed him goodbye on both cheeks. Maurizio sweetly offered to drive Adam to the station himself.

They sat side by side in silence for most of the journey. Time was on their side, and Adam asked if they could swing by Piazza Repubblica to pick up his photos of the memorial garden. Maurizio accompanied him inside the shop. He also insisted on staying with him until the train departed. His last words were to the point.

"You have a good brain. Use it. Somewhere else. Not here. Don't ever come back here again."

As the train jerked out of the station, he reached for the photos of the garden. He skipped over the ones of Flora, not because they were any worse than the others—he was a hopeless photographer, they were all second-rate—but because he felt ashamed. He felt as if he had let her down.

There was to be no justice for the man who slept alongside her beneath the stone floor of the Docci family chapel.

ENGLAND WAS IN THE GRIP OF A HEAT WAVE, WHICH meant there had been four whole days of uninterrupted sunshine. Adam woke to the sound of the rain hammering against the window on the morning of day five, his first morning back.

His mother's opening words to him when he headed downstairs were, "I told him he should have taken his umbrella to work."

It was a familiar phrase; he'd heard her utter it many times before in that gently reproachful way of hers. This time, though, it grated, it remained lodged in his brain while the coffee percolated and his mother sang the praises of the new pop-up toaster they'd purchased while he'd been away. The cat had also been neutered in his absence, he discovered.

He didn't blame her. He knew he was party to the petty little exchanges that constituted life at home. He had shared nothing of any significance with his parents over dinner the night before, aside from some impressions of Italy and an account of his work at Villa Docci. His father's reaction to the news of Adam's unmasking of the garden could be described, at best, as one of grudging respect. Just as predictably, his mother had waited until she was alone with him before offering some heartfelt words of congratulation. Publicly, she always took her lead from her husband—a state of affairs that had irritated Adam in the past, but which now seemed wholly unacceptable.

"Sit down, Mum."

"Darling?"

He carried the cup of tea he'd just made for her to the kitchen table, leaving her little choice but to join him.

"It's lovely to have you back, darling."

"Mum, I know about Dad."

"About Dad?" she asked, a slight note of anxiety jarring with the cheery innocence.

"Harry told me."

Her gaze faltered. "He shouldn't have done that. I asked him not to."

"Mum—"

"He promised he wouldn't."

"Mum—"

"I'm very angry with him."

"Mum." He reached across the table and took her hand.

She bowed her head and stared at her cup of tea. He couldn't see her face behind the curtain of hair, but he could see her shoulders start to convulse. The first faint sobs built quickly in volume.

He slid from his chair and skirted the table. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and held her tight while she bawled.

Later, after they had talked, it was she who suggested they treat themselves to lunch at the Grey Friar—an old coaching inn set in a fold of the North Downs beyond the urban sprawl. It was known for the quality of its cooking and its exorbitant prices, and they only ever went there on special occasions. This felt like one. His mother certainly seemed to think so. She sank two sherries before the meal and even smoked one of Adam's cigarettes. They both ordered the trout, which they ate at a table in the garden now that the rain had stopped and the clouds were clearing.

He told her everything that had happened to him in Italy. The only details he spared her were those of a more intimate nature. She rarely interrupted, allowing him to unburden himself.

When he was finished, she said, "Well, you young people certainly do lead colorful lives."

It was exactly the sort of thing she would say—exactly the sort of thing he had prayed she wouldn't say.

"Oh for goodness sake, Adam," she snapped, "I was joking."

The considered questions she now began firing at him suggested she'd been listening extremely attentively. She searched for an alternative interpretation of events, something that would remove the hurt of Antonella's deceit. When she failed to find anything, she consoled him—in the way that only a mother can.

Adam's father was late home from work, but he returned bearing "extremely good news." His acquaintance at the Baltic Exchange had reiterated his offer of unpaid (but invaluable) work experience. Adam was welcome to start whenever he wanted.

"I don't think I want to do it, Dad."

"You don't think you want to do it?" scowled his father.

"That's wrong. I know I don't."

The inevitable argument ensued. At a certain point his father lost his temper. "As long as you're living under my roof and at my expense, you'll do as you're told."

The sheer volume caught them both off guard.

"How dare you!?" erupted Adam's mother. "How dare you talk like that!? You have no rights here. Not anymore."

His father was struck utterly dumb, and Adam found himself transported to a small side-chapel in a Florentine church. Something in the shapeless anguish of his mother's mouth recalled Masaccio's Eve at the moment of her expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Silence continued to reign. Adam's father glanced at him and realized immediately that his secret was out. He had not anticipated this and he hung his head.

"Tell him," said his mother. "Tell him what really happened in Italy. Tell him what they did to you."

For a man who set great store by logic and cold fact, it was natural that his father should show more interest in the mechanics of Maurizio's crime and its discovery than in the human cost to Adam. However, he did find it in himself to say, "If that girl ever darkens this doorstep . . . well, I don't know what I'll do."

A week later, he found out.

He asked her to wait on the doorstep while he went in search of Adam.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and Adam was mowing the lawn while his mother weeded the borders. He was still in his tennis gear, having played a couple of sets with some friends that morning.

His father appeared from the house, looking shaken. "There's a young woman to see you. I think it's"—his fingers fluttered around his forehead—"from Italy."

"Antonella . . . ?"

"Possibly. Yes. From what you said."

"Didn't you ask, Charles?" called his mother from behind a hydrangea.

"No, I didn't bloody ask, okay? I was too shocked."

Antonella wasn't alone. Fausto hovered sheepishly at her shoulder.

Wild joy fought with anger. His instinct was to slam the door in their faces. Politeness prevailed, assisted by a big dose of curiosity.

"Come in," he said coldly. "You too," he added to Fausto in Italian, using the formal Lei instead of tu to make a point.

His parents had appeared behind him in the entrance hall, defiant, protective, and looking completely ridiculous in their tatty gardening clothes.

"It's okay," he said to them, "we'll go into the garden."

As they stepped onto the back terrace, Antonella pulled an envelope from her pocket and handed it to Adam. It was thick and heavy.

"What is it?"

"Read it. It's okay."

She touched him reassuringly on the arm.

He had spent many hours shaping her into a demon, a valuable life lesson at best, and it shocked him just how easily one feather- light touch could dismantle all his good work, melting the stony desolation of the past week.

"I don't know . . . I'm not sure I can. . . . What is it?" He could feel tears starting to prick his eyes.

"It's okay," she said.

"Go on," said Fausto gently.

Adam took his cigarettes from the terrace table and made for the bench at the end of the garden.

VILLA DOCCI

My dear Adam,

I hope this letter finds you well. I suspect it doesn't, and I don't doubt that I am to blame for that.

Maybe Antonella has already told you something of what has gone on, in which case much of what I write will come as no surprise to you. Either way, you must believe me when I tell you that Antonella had no hand in what happened—none whatsoever. She, like you, is entirely innocent. The rest of us are not. Please try not to judge Maria and Fausto too harshly. They only did what I asked of them, and not always willingly.

I have used you, Adam. I used you before I met you, I used you while you were here, and maybe I am still using you now. I don't expect you to forgive me for this, but I hope that one day you will come to understand my reasons. As Virgil says to Dante at the beginning of La Divina Commedia—which, thanks to you, I have read again—"The way out is the way through." That is how it was for me. Finding myself in a dark place, I saw only one way out if it.

My son killed my son. I suppose I have always known it, from the moment Benedetto first locked the door, closing off the top floor. It was not like him to do such a thing. His nature was to look forward, never backward. He gave his reasons, of course, and I chose to believe them. The alternative was unthinkable.

I am now certain that Benedetto worked out what really happened that night, and leaving those rooms just as they were was his punishment for Maurizio. He wanted Maurizio to live with the memory of what he had done. I have visited the rooms only twice. When Benedetto died I went looking for what he had found up there. A part of me was relieved when I failed. I now know what he discovered because I have followed your footprints across the dusty floor, I have seen where you stopped near the fireplace and folded back the carpet. I have seen the bullet hole in the wooden boards stained with Emilio's blood. You found what Benedetto found, as I hoped (and feared) you would.

The only certainty in life is death. This is something I have always accepted, that is until death paid me a visit last Christmas. Even then, it was not death itself I feared, but the prospect of seeing Emilio again, of standing before him, both of us knowing that I had let him down, that I had done nothing. I swore to him then that if I lived I would get to the truth, however painful it might be. The moment that oath was made I knew I would survive, because I now had a reason to. So it was that one sickness replaced another.

My plan was simple but I required help. That is when I contacted Fausto. I have known him many years. His grandfather was a fine man, his father was not. I'm sorry if I speak ill of the dead, but they seem to me as fair a target for criticism as anyone. Even as a small boy, Fausto was exceptional. Benedetto and I took an interest in him for the sake of his grandfather. Fausto was not to know, but he found out that we had helped with his education over the years. And when I needed help he was there for me. These few lines do not do justice to our friendship or to the respect I have for him.

It was Fausto who went south for me earlier this year to the village near Rome where Gaetano comes from. It was Fausto who discovered that Gaetano's story of a family inheritance was untrue. And it was Fausto who helped me work out how to get to the truth. As you now know, I think, he has an interest in tactics and strategies.

Your role in this affair was mapped out many months ago: a young student, intelligent and inquisitive; the seeds of a mystery planted in his head by Fausto and nourished by me. If Maurizio suspected for a moment that I was behind the thing, he would never have shown himself. The threat had to come from someone else, an innocent. And you are, Adam. It is not your fault. Your age is to blame. A more experienced man would have read the signs. He would have seen that he was being led by the hand.

Almost every step you took was determined in advance. Not all. Some things were impossible to anticipate. Three stand out. I steered you towards the photo albums in order to bring Emilio to life, to make him matter more to you, but I never imagined that you would see the truth of his parentage in those old images. I underestimated you (not for the first or the last time). I am glad now that I did. It has forced me to be honest with Crispin, as I should have been many years ago.

How do you tell a man that the son he never knew he had is dead? It is not easy, but it is finally done. If you have not been able to contact Crispin since your return it is because I have asked him to make himself unavailable to you until you have received this letter. Needless to say, he is extremely angry with me for the way I have treated you, almost as angry as Antonella, although that would take some doing. I have never been spoken to by anyone as I have been by her in these past days.

The other great surprise, impossible to predict, was your work on the garden. There was nothing false about my praise. What you achieved is extraordinary. What it means, I still don't know. As I told you once, I am not superstitious, but I want to be, I want to believe that you have lifted the curse on this place, on our family— the curse of Federico Docci, murderer, the same curse that drove my son to kill his brother. To believe this is to spare Maurizio some of the blame, and myself some of the pain.

Then there is you, Adam. I did not think for a moment that I would come to care about the boy Crispin sent me. But I did, more than you can ever know. Twice I was close to telling you all. On another occasion Maria threatened to do the same. I persuaded her not to. If she showed you no affection while you were here (and I know she did not) it is only because she hated herself for the part she agreed to play. She did not wish to become attached to you.

Maria came late to our team, after your arrival. She was my eyes and ears, my spy. She went through your papers to see how your suspicions were developing, and whenever she could, she stirred Maurizio against you. If Antonella had not told you where the key to the top floor was hidden, then Maria would have done so. She was brilliant. On your last night here she even showed genius, when she was discovered by Maurizio's dog at the door of the chapel.

As you are now aware, there is no gun behind the plaque in the chapel. There are no bullets. Benedetto destroyed them all. The lie I fed you was the bait to draw Maurizio out. It was planned this way. It was also planned that on hearing Maurizio's admission of guilt Maria would come straight to me. The dog was not planned.

Exposed, what could Maria do? She had just heard Maurizio threaten my life. She could not allow him to think there was any connection between her and me. So she lied. She made him believe (and you too, I think) that she was there for Antonella. Just how convincing she was, you know better than I do. It was certainly enough to fool Maurizio and buy me time to arrange matters at my end. We are a large family, the Doccis, and any action taken by me was always going to require the support and sanction of certain relatives. This has now been received.

It is not possible in Italy to disinherit a child, but a child can choose not to receive his inheritance. This is what Maurizio has done, in exchange for my silence. I shall never see him again. How he explains this change of circumstances to his wife, his children and his friends is his business. It will be difficult for him, but I don't doubt that he will find a way. Maybe his excuse will be that I have decided to remain in the villa, which is true, and he can no longer tolerate his mother's indecision.

Is this justice? No. Is there enough evidence to convict Maurizio of Emilio's murder? There never was. But at least the truth is finally out. It is enough. It has to be enough because that's all there is, that's all there was ever going to be. I knew this from the start, before I even met you.

There it is, Adam. I wish you weren't a part of it, but you are, and you only have me to blame. Fausto and Maria acted out of loyalty to me, and I expect you to find it within yourself to forgive them. I expect no such thing for myself.

I cannot imagine what you are thinking right now, but let me say this. I lied to you, I used you, I even placed you in physical danger (although you were more closely protected than you are probably aware). All of these things are true, I don't deny them, but most of what passed between us was good and honest. I meant what I said to you just before we sat down to dinner at the party. I asked you then to remember my words. Do you? I hope so, because they are as true as any I have ever spoken.

You fell foul of an old woman looking to do the right thing by her dead son. It may seem enormous to you now, but time and the weight of experience will compress the painful memory of your stay at Villa Docci until it is just one slender stratum in the bedrock of your life. Try not to forget that.

With great affection, Francesca

Adam read the letter twice, steeping himself in the words.

When he returned to the terrace, he found his mother serving tea. She saw from his face that all was good and gave a small smile as she withdrew.

"I thought you were the one behind it all."

"I know," said Antonella. "Maria had to make Maurizio believe it."

"It wasn't just that. I saw Fausto leaving your house that last morning."

Antonella exchanged a look with Fausto. "He came to see me, to explain. We argued, but he persuaded me to play along. He said it wasn't for long. And it hasn't been, although it feels like it."

She reached out and gingerly took his hand.

Fausto slid a book across the table—the book on Renaissance sculpture that Adam had lost in the pine park in Viareggio.

Adam fingered the tome, processing the information. "That was you?"

Fausto nodded.

"You followed me there?"

Fausto nodded.

Adam's eyes remained locked on Fausto's.

"I'm sorry, Adam. Really."

"Really?"

"Really." "Okay."

"Good," said Fausto with a beaming smile. "That's very good."

Their bags were collected from a small hotel near Purley station. They had taken rooms there, not knowing how things would go. This displayed "an admirable lack of presumption" according to Adam's father, who had started to thaw a little. Fausto was assigned Harry's room, Antonella the guest bedroom at the far end of the corridor.

Adam took them off to the Stag and Hounds for a drink before dinner. Fausto had never seen darts played before and muscled in on a game, shamelessly filching cigarettes from his new and slightly bewildered friends.

It was the first time Adam had been alone with Antonella since her arrival, and it felt good.

"Hello," he said.

She smiled and stroked his thigh beneath the table. "How are you feeling?"

"Numb. Relieved."

"Thanks for the present."

"The present?"

"The rock in my kitchen."

"Sorry, I didn't have time to wrap it."

She laughed.

He glanced over at Fausto. "Was Signora Fanelli involved?"

"Signora Fanelli?"

"I followed Fausto after he left your place. He went straight to see her at the pensione."

"So?"

"Well . . . they're close. I saw them kiss."

"I think that is a new thing, after you arrived. Nonna says they used to be very close, but there was some problem. She is very happy about it."

"I'm sure she is."

"Why are you smiling?"

"Nothing."

Given what he now knew about Signora Docci's modus operandi, it wasn't so surprising that she'd even found time for a bit of matchmaking along the way. There were any number of pensioni in San Casciano she could have placed Adam in.

It was warm enough to have dinner on the terrace. His mother excelled herself in the kitchen; his father cracked open a couple of bottles of vintage claret he'd been saving for Adam's graduation. They raised a toast to Harry, and when they speculated about some of the scrapes he must surely have got himself into by now, it was good to hear the sound of his father's laughter again.

Inevitably, some hours later, Adam found himself tiptoeing down the corridor toward the guest bedroom. Antonella was waiting for him, already naked beneath the sheets. The need for silence only heightened the intensity of their lovemaking. When it was over and they were lying tangled in each other, he cried, overwhelmed. Antonella licked away his tears and held him.

Later, out of the darkness beside him, she said, "My grandmother thinks she knows who Flora's lover was."

"Huh?" he grunted, from a delicious half-sleep.

She repeated herself.

Now he was awake. "Who?"

"She wouldn't tell me. She will only tell you, in person—-faccia a faccia."

"Does she ever stop?"

"Stop?"

"Playing games."

He tried to summon up anger at this latest piece of manipulation, but it was a struggle. Signora Docci might think that responsibility for her behavior stopped with her; he wasn't so sure. He had reassessed many things over the past week, but he hadn't quite been able to shake the conviction that someone else had been controlling matters all along.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his parents both in their dressing gowns in the kitchen. His father was seated at the table with Fausto; his mother was frying bacon at the stove.

Adam shuffled up to her in his pajamas and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Morning."

"Is Antonella awake?"

"I don't know. I didn't look in on her."

She slipped him a knowing look. "Well, why don't you take her up a cup of tea anyway?"

"Good idea."

He filled the kettle, glancing over at the table as he did so. Fausto was explaining something to his father in rapid-fire Italian while shifting pots of jam, cutlery and other objects around in some kind of demonstration.

His mother leaned close to him and whispered, "We think it's the Battle of Hastings."

IT HAD RAINED IN HIS ABSENCE, ENOUGH TO SWELL THE grapes on the vines and raise hopes of an acceptable harvest. There was even a faint tinge of green to the scorched pasture below the grotto, although this was about the only noticeable change in the memorial garden.

Adam opened the book Signora Docci had given him. It was his for the keeping, a gift: a leather-bound edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses, old and rather precious, he suspected. She had made him promise not to read the dedication on the flyleaf before reaching the garden.

It was short and very touching, and tucked into the same page was a small piece of paper on which she had written:

He found the line in the text and smiled. She intended to make him work for the answer.

It hadn't come to him by the time he reached the glade of Hyacinth. Standing before the statue of Apollo, he opened the book again at the relevant passage. It dealt with the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the lone survivors of the great flood, whose raft grounded itself on Mount Parnassus. The line itself read:

Parnassus is its name, whose twin-peaked rise

Mounts thro' clouds, and mates the lofty skies.

He looked up at Apollo perched atop Parnassus, his mountain home—only it wasn't Mount Parnassus, because it rose to a lone and very pointed peak. It was unlike Federico Docci to deviate from Ovid without a reason; his attention to detail was too meticulous.

He worked his way through the other options—Mount Olympus, Mount Helicon—but again he turned up a blank. That's when he realized he was coming at it all wrong.

He wasn't looking at Apollo; he was looking at Flora's lover in the guise of Apollo. Which meant that he wasn't looking at Mount Parnassus; he was looking at, well, just a mountain, one that climbed to a high, sharp peak.

A tall mountain.

"Montalto," he said quietly.

It was a direct translation.

Fulvio Montalto, the young architect of Villa Docci. No wonder he had disappeared from the historical record. Federico Docci had made sure of that.

The circle was complete. And so was Flora. This final revelation, this last piece of the puzzle, somehow rounded her off, made her whole. Because it allowed her love to live again. Stopping to gaze up at her as he left the garden, he saw it burning in her eyes, just as Fulvio's love for her still smoldered in the effortless beauty of the villa he had designed for her.

No doubt there was more of their story yet to be uncovered, maybe even a record of Fulvio's death buried away in some dusty archive. But her job was done. She had handed him the baton. It was up to him what he did with it now.

Threading his way back up the overgrown path to the villa, he cast his thoughts back to that sunstruck May day in Cambridge— where it had all begun—and asked himself whether he would have done anything differently, knowing what he now did.

It was not a question easily answered.

He barely recognized himself in the carefree young man cycling along the towpath beside the river, bucking over the ruts, the bottle of wine dancing around in the bike basket.

Try as he might, he couldn't penetrate the workings of that stranger's mind, let alone say with any certainty how he would have dealt with the news that murder lay in wait for him, just around the corner.

READERS GUIDE

The Savage Garden

by Mark Mills

Did you find the map at the beginning of the novel helpful? If so, would you have preferred a map of Italy as well? Or, perhaps, sketches of the statues and the mythological scenarios the book describes?

Do you think Harry's character exists only for comic relief, or does he offer some insight and depth to the storyline of a novel? Discuss how other minor characters—such as Maria the maid or Adam's innkeeper in the city—serve as foils for the main characters.

What mystery story devices—from foreshadowing to red herrings—does Mills employ, and in what instances, to sustain suspense?

Adam and Antonella first take a tour of the garden in Chapter 8. Mills describes the temple that they encounter: "The building was dedicated to Echo, the unfortunate nymph who fell hard forNarcissus. He, too preoccupied with his own beauty, spurned her attentions, whereupon Echo, heartbroken, faded away until only her voice remained." This scenario seems to metaphorically describe Adam and Antonella's relationship at the end of the novel: Adam too preoccupied with solving the mystery, and she heartbroken and speechless with only a letter in hand. In what ways does the author utilize this paralleling with his other characters and mythological creatures? Do you think it's necessary to come to The Savage Garden with a thorough knowledge of Roman mythology and having read classic texts such as Dante's The Divine Comedy and Machiavelli's Il Principe? Why or why not?

Discuss what elements of The Savage Garden carry echoes of William Shakespeare's writing and the themes, language and characters of his plays. Does the novel read almost like a play script, with its extensive use of dialogue?

An undercurrent of licentious sexual behavior runs throughout the novel. Discuss how the biblical garden as metaphor permeates the book.

History, specifically the history of World War II and other major battles, has a strong presence throughout the novel. Discuss how including these conflicts affects the novel as a whole. What was the state of the country, culture and people of Italy in 1958, still only recently removed from the destructive end of World War II? Could the author have set The Savage Garden in another time period without losing the effect and world he creates? Writing from a distance of nearly fifty years, how does Mills establish a sense of verisimilitude that his characters are operating and interacting in a specific historical era?

Toward the end of Francesca's letter to Adam she writes, "I meant what I said to you just before we sat down to dinner at the party. I asked you then to remember my words. Do you? I hope so, because they are as true as any I have ever spoken." What exactly were Francesca's words?

The author touches upon the theme of closure numerous times throughout the novel—from a three-hundred-year-old murder to the death of Emilio to Adam's father's infidelity. How important is closure within the frame of the book's world? Were you satisfied with the novel's ending? Why or why not?

Discuss Professor Leonard's possible various motivations for sending Adam to Italy, besides those he openly states. Do you feel the professor knows he's sending Adam into what amounts to a viper's nest? Does the professor see Adam as a surrogate son?

Do you feel there is a deeper meaning behind the revelation that Emilio is Professor Leonard's son? Or do you think perhaps the author has included this as simply another issue for the characters to overcome?

About the Author

Mark Mills is a screenwriter whose first novel, Amagansett, was published in a dozen countries and received the British Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Memorial Dagger Award. A graduate of Cambridge, he lives in Oxford with his wife and two children.