Page 28 of Murder at Christmas

18

WEDNESDAY LUNCHTIME

Although I wasn’t feeling in a holiday mood, I hadn’t forgotten my real reason for being here, and when Anna went up to our room, I slipped into her seat close to Gloria. Unlike her husband, Captain Birdseye, who had been happily skiing all morning, she had been sitting in the sunshine holding one of those silver reflective fan-shaped things under her chin to reflect the sun’s rays back, so as to give her face a perfect tan. I hoped she had applied some serious UV protection, but that was her business.

Remembering her damning verdict of Bartolomeo the previous night, I gradually brought the conversation around to him, keen to dig a bit deeper. It took a while and some probing questions, but I finally managed to get her talking, but before she did so, I saw her shoot a glance up the slope to check that her husband was still up there on his skis, and that she could speak freely.

‘Bartolomeo was a pig. He’s been making salacious comments and propositioning me for years, and Monday night was the last straw. I was furious with him.’ She turned towards me and looked me straight in the eye. ‘And I had every right to be.’ After another furtive glance up the mountainside, shelaunched into her tale. ‘It was late on Monday, just before midnight. Umberto had gone up to bed after dinner, but I wasn’t tired, so I was in the games room watching a movie on the big screen. I heard the door, and Bartolomeo materialised behind me and started stroking my hair, breathing a toxic mix of grappa and wine fumes all over me.’ For the first time, I heard real emotion in her voice. ‘It was creepy and scary. There I was, sitting down, helpless, with that awful man leaning over me, molesting me, and whispering in my ear. I won’t tell you what he was whispering, but you can probably guess. Can you imagine how that made me feel, Signor Armstrong?’

I was shocked and I told her so. ‘Your brother-in-law started flirting with you? That’s appalling. I must admit that I saw him drinking heavily, but that’s no excuse. What did you do?’

‘It was a lot more than flirting. I tried to scream, but he put one of his hands over my mouth. If Marina hadn’t walked in at that moment, God knows what would have happened.’

‘And what was Marina’s reaction?’

‘She was carrying a tray with a cup of hot milk for me on it and she was so shocked, she dropped it. The crash made him turn around and thankfully, he released me and almost ran out of the room. Marina could see how upset I was and she came over to comfort me. I know it sounds crazy, considering she’s almost half my age, but I just clung onto her and cried like a baby. Marina started crying her eyes out as well. We stayed like that for ages before I finally pulled myself together and went up to bed. I’m pleased to say that the next time I saw Bartolomeo was when you and Paolo carried his body back in – and that was fine with me.’

This was a startling revelation, and it went a long way towards explaining her bitter comments about the dead man the previous night. Up till now, I had mentally dismissed Bartolomeo as a bit of a Don Juan, but physically molesting hissister-in-law was a very different affair. There was no question that, with the act having been witnessed by Marina, Bartolomeo would have been in serious trouble with the police – assuming that his sister-in-law had reported him. That was my next question.

‘Did you tell your husband? Did you tell the police?’

Her eyes once more flicked up to where her husband was visible being propelled uphill by the lift. ‘I was so furious that I woke Umberto up as soon as I got back to our room. He knew that I didn’t get on with his brother, but I’d never told him about his advances before. This time, Bartolomeo had gone too far, and I told Umberto everything. As you can imagine, he was furious. I’ve never seen him like it before. There’s always been friction between him and his brother, and that’s why he never wanted to get involved with the business even though his parents were keen for the two of them to go into it together. Unlike Bartolomeo, Umberto’s a pacific sort of person and he’s always tended to avoid confrontation, but on Monday night, he was livid.’

I was about to ask the obvious question when she answered it for me.

‘Signor Armstrong, I know that you think there’s a chance that Bartolomeo was murdered, and, although I’ll certainly shed no tears over the death of that slimy rat, I promise you it wasn’t me, and it certainly wasn’t my husband.’

‘Did you and Umberto report him to the police?’

She shook her head. ‘I wanted to, but I had a feeling Umberto was going to say no, and I was right. He told me that this was a private Viviani family affair and not for public consumption.’ There was sheer frustration in her voice, and I knew how she felt. Clearly, Umberto shared his brother’s desire for secrecy.

I gave Gloria a sympathetic smile. ‘If he wasn’t going to go to the authorities, what was he going to do about it?’ I almostasked her if she was really sure he hadn’t gone off to murder his brother, but I left that unsaid – for now.

‘He said somebody had to take a stand, before his brother got completely out of control. At first, he was all for having it out with Bartolomeo right there and then, but I managed to talk him out of it. God knows what would have happened if the two brothers had started fighting – particularly with Bartolomeo so drunk. I managed to calm him down a bit until he agreed to sleep on it first. But then Bartolomeo was in meetings all next morning and, of course, the next thing we knew, he was dead.’

I took a mouthful of beer and sat back. What Gloria had just told me formed a pretty convincing motive for her or her husband to have committed murder. In spite of her protestations to the contrary, it would have been easy for either or both of them to have followed Bartolomeo to his Crows’ Nest on Tuesday afternoon and pushed him off. Did I believe them capable of it? She had sounded sincere in her denial, but anything’s possible in a murder inquiry. I needed to sit down and talk to Umberto as soon as I could.

Anna stayed in our room after lunch, pleading exhaustion, while Oscar and I hit the slopes again for an hour before finally calling it a day around three. When we got back to the terrace, I looked around for Umberto, but without success. Presumably, he had gone up to his room. However, I did see Marina in the process of cleaning up the barbeque and I took advantage of the fact that she was on her own to go over for a quick talk.

‘Marina, can I ask you something?’

She nodded, but I could see that she was uncomfortable.

‘I was talking to Gloria at lunchtime, and she told me what happened in the games room on Monday night. By the sound of it, you arrived in the nick of time. Could you tell me in your own words what you saw?’

After a nervous look around to check that we were not being overheard, Marina nodded. ‘Gloria came to me half an hour ago and said she’d told you about it.’ She went on to confirm the facts as recounted by Gloria and when she reached the end of her account, she was looking distressed. ‘Bartolomeo used to be a good man, a good employer, but he’d changed recently.’ She looked around apprehensively once more. ‘It was ever since Signor Vincenzo was killed a few weeks ago. He was fine until then, but all through December, he’s been drinking to excess, acting like a bear with a sore head, arguing and snapping at people – including Paolo and me. Maybe the sex thing developed from that.’ The expression on her face was one of disapproval – or more.

A memory stirred in my head. ‘On Monday evening, I found you in the hall looking furious. I asked you what it was, and you told me it was just something that had happened. I’m only guessing, but did Bartolomeo try it on with you as well?’

I had to wait for her to answer, and when she did, it was only after she had taken a good look around to check that she wasn’t being overheard. ‘You’re right, he did, but nothing happened. He’d been giving me creepy looks when I was putting the glasses away at the bar, and then I suddenly heard him behind me and felt his hands run over my bottom. I was so shocked, I didn’t know what to say, so I just pushed him away and ran out of the room. That’s when you saw me.’

‘Did you tell Paolo?’

She shook her head resolutely. ‘Absolutely not. He would have been hopping mad…’ Realising what she’d said, she almost stumbled over her words as she hurried to qualify her comment. ‘Not that he’d do anything like committing murder. No, nothing like that. He’s not that sort of man.’

I filed this snippet of information away for future consideration. The fact remained that neither Marina nor Paolohad an alibi for Tuesday between one-thirty and two-thirty – and now they had motive.

She reached over and gripped my forearm for a moment. ‘Do you want to know what I think happened on Tuesday? I think Signor Bartolomeo must have reached the end of his tether, maybe realised that he was going mad, and that’s why he went to the boulder and threw himself off.’