The Night Falling (46 page)

Sometime later Clare is lifted up and seated on one of the couches; a glass of brandy is held to her lips and tipped into her mouth when she shows no signs of drinking it.

‘Come on. All of it,’ says Leandro. Clare swallows and then gags, coughing. ‘Ah, Ettore! My poor boy. To survive the Great War and this fascist strife, only to be shot by a coward when he was down.’ He shakes his head; he’s leaden with sorrow. ‘I’m too old to expect justice in this world, but still. Some things are far too bad. Drink the brandy. We all need it.’ The pistol is tucked into his belt. He moves like an old man; his knuckles are bloody and his chin is bruised. Clare looks down at where Ettore lay but he’s not there any more, just the blackish stain of his blood. She can’t remember them taking him; far beneath her shock she senses grief and panic, scrabbling for the surface like a trapped animal.

‘Why are you crying like that? For
him
?’ says Pip. Clare looks at him but he’s sitting next to Marcie, and speaking to her. Marcie’s face is a ruin; her make-up is streaked and grotesque.

‘You weren’t supposed to shoot him. Nobody was supposed to
shoot
him!’ Marcie gasps, between sobs.

‘I was protecting you! Like I promised I would – like you asked me to! But why are you crying like that? It’s … it’s
me
you love! You said so!’ he says. Clare stares at him, horrified; Leandro grunts as he sits down.

‘You’ll find that not much that comes out of my wife’s mouth is altogether true, boy,’ he says.

‘We’re in love,’ says Pip defiantly. He takes Marcie’s hand. ‘She’s going to leave you! She doesn’t love you any more, she loves me. We’ve been together for weeks.’ But Marcie shakes her hand free.

‘Shut up, you little idiot!’ she snaps at him. Pip keeps trying to catch at her hand. His face is almost comic with hurt and confusion.

‘What?’ Clare manages to say, but too quietly for anyone to hear her. The brandy spreads out into her blood. She takes another sip and looks around the room. No sign of Paola or the guard, and Boyd is sitting in the corner with his knees drawn up, his arms wrapped around them and his face down, like a child. It’s so absurd Clare almost laughs.

The sound of Marcie crying is all they hear for a while. Pip stares at her, abject, bewildered; he keeps trying to take hold of her hands. Clare’s head is ringing.

‘Do you know how I knew, Clare?’ says Leandro. ‘Clare, are you listening to me? Do you know how I knew you were in danger, and why I brought you out here? It was to protect you, you see. Isn’t that rich?’ He swigs his brandy, nods at Boyd. ‘I brought you out here to protect you from
him
. I thought he meant to have you killed. He said to me – when he first got out here and I asked about you – he said “She’s an angel. A perfect angel”, and straight away I was frightened for you, because that’s what he said about his first wife Emma, you see. That’s
exactly
how he described her to me, with that same … desperation, that same
passion
, when he bought me to kill her. I’ve got to tell you, Clare, I think the man you married is sick in the head.’

‘What?’ says Clare. She can’t follow him, can’t unpick the meaning of these bizarre words. Pip has gone very silent, very still; he’s stopped trying to grab at Marcie’s hands. Clare doesn’t like his colour, or the way his eyes are glazed and shining.

‘What else would you call it? The irrationality of it … I had nothing but contempt for any of the people who hired me in that capacity – because what were they all except cowards? Hypocrites. Killing but keeping their hands clean. But Boyd was the worst; the weakest. He was shaking like a leaf when he came to find me, and couldn’t look me in the eye the whole time we talked – not until I asked him why. I asked him, what had she done? Then he looks up with this sudden calm, this total conviction, and tells me his wife is a perfect angel.’ Leandro shakes his head. ‘Tells me it like he’s
affronted
by the question. So I turned him down at first, I didn’t think he was serious; I didn’t think he knew what he wanted. But he kept offering me more money, and in the end I took it. I wish I hadn’t; God knows I wish I hadn’t. But I did and there’s no getting away from that.’

Slowly, his story sinks into Clare. She frowns in disbelief, looking over at Boyd’s hunched figure as though he might react, as though he might stand up and deny this outrageous accusation. But he’s motionless. She thinks of the perfect circle of the gun barrel, the hollow click when he fired it at her.

‘No. No … Emma got ill and died. She died of a fever. Everybody knows that; everybody said. How can she possibly have been … murdered, and nobody know about it? It’s ridiculous.’

‘It was in the New York papers, for a while.’ Leandro shrugs. ‘But not on the front page. And Boyd was never implicated – I don’t think the police even figured out Emma had been cheating on him, and he did a good job of looking heartbroken. They just thought it was a street robbery. Then Boyd went to England, found new friends and spun them a prettier story – for the boy’s sake, he could have told anyone who heard a rumour – and I’m sure all you Brits were far too polite to enquire any further. But believe me, she was murdered. I ought to know.’

‘Are you saying … are you saying you’re an assassin, Mr Cardetta?’ says Clare.

‘I was, yes. That’s how I started out; how I started to get rich. Killing people for money. All of this’ – he spreads his hands to encompass the fine room, the
masseria
, the land around it – ‘is built on that. So, do you still think I’m a good man, Chiarina?’ Clare has no answer for him. ‘But Emma Kingsley was one of the last. That was the moment I felt like I’d lost my soul, you see,’ he says, sounding sad and distracted. ‘Do you remember I said so? It was killing that lovely young woman. Killing her for money, when all she’d done was fallen in love. I knew it was wrong but I told myself it was business, and it didn’t matter. Well, it was business, but it did matter. I felt the injustice of it in my blood, like … like a sickness. It bothered me. And it bothered me that it didn’t seem to bother him at all.’ He points a finger at Boyd. ‘Perhaps I thought we should both be punished. I don’t know. But he’s stuck in my mind, all these years. It joined us somehow. We were in it together, him and me.’

Clare sits mute and tries to think. Her mind is slow, everything is languid and unreal, like it’s underwater. She’s in an alien element, far out of her depth. She thinks back, goes through her memories, tries to fit them into this reality and finds, astonishingly, that she can.

‘It did bother him. He was afraid. He was always afraid,’ she says, woodenly. ‘After you came to see him in New York, seven years ago … after you found him he tried to … he tried to end it all.’

‘Did he?’ Leandro grunts and nods. ‘Well, fear is a kind of sickness, I suppose, it can drive a man mad. I would have left it at that, if he hadn’t called you what he did. “A perfect angel.” If he hadn’t said that, I’d never have tried to intervene.’

‘Why did you even contact him again? Why did you even want him to design for you?’

‘I’m not even sure myself, truthfully. Moments like that in life – moments when things turn a corner, when you step off the path you’re on and go a different way – those are important moments. And he was there with me for perhaps the most important of mine. He was the author of it, and I never forgot him, not completely. After all this time I wanted to … I wanted to see him again. I wanted to see how this thing we shared was affecting him.
If
it was still affecting him, like it was affecting me.’ He shrugs. ‘The urge to find him wouldn’t leave me alone. Then he spoke about you as he’d spoken about her and I … I
couldn’t
let that go. I needed to see how he was with you, how you were with him. I needed to know if he’d changed, or if history was repeating itself.’

‘How did you think you could help me?’ Clare is still bewildered, fighting to keep up.

‘Again, I hardly know. I wanted to warn you, I suppose. Or frighten Boyd so much with the consequences of something happening to you that nothing would. Or persuade him to simply let you go, if it had come to that. And what do you do when you get here? You cheat on him! You fall in love with Ettore, and make goddamned sure he’s got cause to kill you! Ha!’ Another swig of brandy; he rolls his lips back over his teeth as it goes down. ‘There was something about that blue-eyed mongrel, that’s for sure. My wife fell for him, same as you did, when he was here with us last winter, although as far as I know the boy held her off. He showed me that much respect, at least.’ He fixes Marcie a look, blackly simmering. ‘All those English lessons, all that fussing and nursing; always pestering me to make him stay longer.’ Finally, Marcie stops crying and starts to look afraid.

‘You knew?’ she says.

‘Honey, I love you but I’ve got to tell you – you’re a bad actress. Really bad.’ Leandro runs his hands across his hair and down over his face, like he’s wiping something off. ‘Things haven’t gone quite as I planned them,’ he says, to nobody in particular.

After a few seconds of stillness Marcie takes out a handkerchief and starts to wipe her face, as if shocked into propriety. She sits up straighter and smooths down her hair, and beside her Pip watches her every move as if searching for clues or instructions. His eyes are bloated with tears; before long they start to slide down his face.

‘Pip,’ says Clare. She has the sudden clear image of him standing, shaking, pointing the gun at Ettore and pulling the trigger. She shuts her eyes. ‘Pip, come and sit with me,’ she says, holding out her hand; but Pip ignores her, like she hasn’t spoken. He turns his head slowly towards Boyd.

‘Father … it’s lies, isn’t it? Tell them it’s not true. My mother got sick and died. Just tell them!’ Pip’s voice turns shrill. Boyd shifts minutely, like something’s coursing through him, causing a ripple. But he doesn’t look up, and he doesn’t reply.

‘It’s not lies, Filippo. I’m sorry for it, and I’m sorry you’re hearing it now, but you need to. Your mother didn’t deserve what happened to her, not for the crime of falling in love. A man will be angry to be cuckolded, yes.’ Leandro glances over at Boyd, who doesn’t move a muscle. ‘Angry, yes. So divorce her if you want, or cut her off, but accept it. Life’s like that; the heart is like that. These things happen and we can’t help them – I don’t see why women should be expected to resist the strength of such feelings, any more than men.’ He looks hard at his wife again. ‘But seducing a boy, little more than a child, out of
spite
? Doing it with a cold heart, deliberately to
wound me
?’ His voice has risen to a bellow; Marcie flinches. ‘That’s low.’

‘I wasn’t trying to wound you, Leandro, I swear, I wanted to—’ she says, and breaks off, flicking angry eyes at Clare.

‘You did it to hurt Clare? Why? Oh … I see. Because Ettore fell for her, and not for you.’ Leandro nods. ‘That’s still vile, Marcie. It’s still vile.’

‘You made Pip tell you? About Ettore and me?’ says Clare. Marcie glares at her.

‘I knew weeks ago, you fool. I saw you two together – I saw you go into his room at night, in your slip. Before he had a chance to close the shutters! I’ve known all along.’

‘You saw me through the window? But … your room doesn’t look out that way.’

‘I wasn’t in my room, I was—’ Marcie stops short again, snaps her mouth closed.

‘Watching his window from some vantage point?’ says Leandro softly. Marcie’s cheeks redden. ‘Like a love-struck teenager?’ He shakes his head, wistful. ‘There was a time you held such a candle for me, Marcie. Do you even remember it?’

‘You brought me out here and left me to rot,’ she says, her voice trembling.

‘I brought you out here to love and support me! To be
my
wife!’ he shouts. ‘Woman, you make my heart sore.’ With a small, broken sound Marcie puts her hands over her eyes. Her mouth is a set, flat line and she’s no longer crying. Clare remembers her advice to Pip:
If it bothers you to see, don’t look
. She wants to tear Marcie’s hands away and open her eyes, but she hasn’t the will to move.

Leandro levers himself up and goes around with the brandy bottle again, topping up all of their glasses. Only Boyd doesn’t have one. ‘Drink it. All of you. We need to restore some fucking sanity here.’

‘You … you killed my mother?’ says Pip. His lips have gone ashen again; the skin around them almost blue.

‘Drink your brandy, Philip. You look ready to die of fright,’ says Leandro. ‘Yes, I killed her. A single shot to the head, as she walked home from her boyfriend’s house one night; and then I hit the boyfriend too, right afterwards. That’s what your father paid me to do. If I was the gun that shot your mother, then it was your father who pointed me and pulled the trigger.’

‘Leandro, that’s enough,’ says Clare. Pip is breathing far too fast; she can’t imagine what he must be feeling. She doesn’t try to imagine what she herself is feeling. All she knows is that when she’s able to feel anything again, she’ll wish she can’t. When she looks at the folded-up figure of her husband she realises that the nagging feeling she’s had all this time was right. She doesn’t know him at all.

‘The cat’s out of the bag already.’ Leandro shrugs. ‘And since my wife’s spent the last month making a man out of the kid, I guess he’s grown up enough to hear it.’ But he’s not, Clare knows. Pip is crying like a child; he can’t possibly be taking everything in, it’s too much. It’s too much for Clare.

Two young men come in from the courtyard, wearing the dark uniforms and peaked caps of the
carabinieri
. They sweep their eyes uncertainly over the room’s mixed and broken inhabitants. ‘You’ve rounded them all up?’ Leandro asks them in Italian.

‘Yes, Mr Cardetta.’

‘How many dead?’

‘Seven; and twenty-one wounded.’

‘And my niece?’

‘We have her, unharmed. Shall we take her in with the others?’

‘No. Have my men put her somewhere here for now, and keep watch on her.’

‘Paola?’ says Clare. Some thought nudges for her attention. ‘No … her baby. She must be allowed to get back to her baby.’