Lucifer's Shadow

10 An awkward interview

Giulia Morelli rang the bell on the ancient house in San Cassian. The housekeeper answered the door. She wore a plain nylon housecoat and smiled uncomfortably when she saw the police ID. The woman was blinking at the sunlight, as if she hated to be outside.

The policewoman remembered the last time she interviewed Scacchi. It was at the station, at his own request, in the company of a cheap lawyer. Nothing came of the discussion. Scacchi was as slippery as an eel, but charming too.

She peered at the servant, as if half recognising her. “Have we met before?”

“I don’t believe so,” the woman replied briskly. “What do you want, please?”

Yet they had exchanged glances at least once, when she had seen Scacchi on the boat, fast asleep, and realised that he might be able to offer some insight into the strange events which followed the disinterment of Susanna Gianni. The housekeeper had been at the helm of the craft, steering it with a professional air of disdain towards the mass of waterborne traffic on the Cannaregio canal.

“I would like an interview with Signor Scacchi. Is he at home?”

“Yes. For what reason?”

“I will discuss that with him myself. It is a private matter.”

The housekeeper bristled. “He is tired. I will not allow him to be disturbed. Do the police not make appointments?”

Giulia Morelli found it impossible not to smile. The woman was implacable in her determination to protect the man and had moved her body to fill the doorway, as if she would block any intruder with her physical presence. “I am sorry. You are quite correct. I should have called beforehand. Most of my appointments are not with gentlemen like Scacchi, you understand. I forget myself.”

The white housecoat did not move from the door. There was a noise from inside the hallway.

“I wanted to ask Scacchi’s advice on a matter of which he has specialist knowledge. Nothing more.”

The old man shuffled into view. From the expression on the housekeeper’s face, she was unaware he had been eavesdropping.

“One must always help the police, Laura,” Scacchi insisted, and beckoned Giulia Morelli into the house. “Some coffee, Captain? We haven’t spoken since you sought that lost bauble from St. Petersburg, I believe.”

She followed him up the stairs into an elegant living room, sitting on the sofa at his beckoning. He slumped into an armchair opposite. The young man from the boat was in the corner, peering at a set of ancient books.

“Daniel,” Scacchi declared. “Cease your studies and meet a Venetian police officer. Captain Giulia Morelli. Daniel Forster. Daniel is English— at least it says as much on his passport — but we are fast developing a theory that he is a foundling who was spirited away to that cold climate as an infant.”

Daniel Forster was handsome, though somewhat ingenuous, she thought. Was it possible he was blushing?

“You are on holiday?” she asked.

“He does a little research for me,” Scacchi interrupted.

“Work which is as good as a holiday,” Daniel said in near-perfect Italian. “I can’t thank Signor Scacchi sufficiently for the kindness he has shown me.”

She watched the old man’s expression. It seemed troubled. Scacchi was not a man to dispense kindness without a purpose. The housekeeper returned with two small cups of coffee. Scacchi waved at the door. “The captain is on police business. I think you should take your books elsewhere, Daniel. You, too, Laura.”

They left, a little reluctantly, it seemed to her. The old man folded his hands on his knees, smiled, and said, “Well, Captain. What have you come to arrest me for this time?”

“Scacchi.” She beamed. “I have only arrested you once before and was unable, or unwilling, to press charges, in any case. You are most unfair.”

“Huh! I have the single most ambitious woman in the Venice police in my parlour and she wishes me to think this is a social call?”

“Not at all. As I told your charming and most protective housekeeper, I merely seek your advice. And have some to offer in return too.”

His face was grey and miserable when he allowed the pleasantries to drop. Scacchi was sick. It was obvious the rumours she had heard were correct. Giulia Morelli felt sorry for the old man.

“You know why I have come, surely?”

“I am an antiquarian, my dear. Not a psychic.”

“The Gianni girl. You were familiar with the family.”

He stared at her sourly. “Ten years ago. Who wants to drag up that terrible story again?”

“You read about the murdered cemetery superintendent. Surely? What the papers did not tell you is that earlier that day he had exhumed the poor girl’s body, on forged papers too. And something was in that coffin, Scacchi.”

“What?” he asked immediately.

“I don’t know. A personal object of some value. Of some size too. I think it was too large to be jewellery.”

He opened his hands as if bemused. “You are asking my advice about an object you cannot identify which may or may not have been taken from a casket which has lain underground for a decade. What do you expect me to say?”

Giulia Morelli hesitated. She had so little information.

“You knew the Giannis….”

“Only slightly.”

“You met the girl. Perhaps you knew what she was buried with.”

He shook his head. “Fantasies, my dear.”

“Perhaps.” There was another reason she had come. “But you must know something, Scacchi. Whatever was taken from that coffin has caused one man’s death already. If someone should be unwise enough to accept it, perhaps there will be more. There is something strange here, and dangerous. Think of that, and call me.”

Scacchi sighed. “You are young. You still have a romantic, a distant notion about death.”

She thought of the blade flashing through the air of the grubby apartment and the corpse opposite her. “I think not.”

He studied her face with weary, perceptive eyes. “I read about your… ordeal in the paper. I am glad you were not seriously hurt. You have chosen a dangerous profession, Captain.”

Was that a threat? she wondered. Scacchi’s perfect manners surely made such a thing impossible.

“Sometimes we invite danger into our lives without even knowing,” she replied. “I thought I was going to interview an irate cemetery superintendent. Not interrupt a murder.”

Scacchi coughed, a dry, dead sound. “Surely not, my dear,” he remarked. “You thought you saw the ghost of that poor dead girl. And you couldn’t resist chasing it.”

Giulia Morelli said nothing. From beyond the door she heard the sound of the housekeeper and the young man, Daniel. They were laughing, an easy, intimate laughter of a kind she rarely heard. She looked at Scacchi and wondered if she had been crazy to think he could help.

Outside, the bell of San Cassian tolled twelve.