A Murder in Tuscany Read Online Free PDF Page B

and Mauro, the other kitchen girl, Ginevra’s niece Nicoletta – Nicki – each
with their own version of what had happened, although, it turned out, none of them had actually talked to a policeman. What was certain was that it concerned Dottoressa Meadows, and the missing car. Ginevra had put a stop to it eventually; there was coffee to lay out in the library for the guests, and lunches to be prepared. They had to keep going as normal; they’d find out at eleven.
    As she had filled the labelled wicker lunchboxes each guest was issued with on arrival, Cate had tried not to think about it; wait until you know, she’d told herself. But in the pit of her stomach she’d felt a kind of dread she didn’t quite understand. In each linen-lined basket she’d laid the small packages in their waxed paper – frittata , grilled peppers, a slab of bread and a couple of tomatoes – and then buckled the lid. Mauro or Nicki would deliver the lunchboxes to the castle’s apartments by one o’clock.
    The American women were in the outbuildings; the artist, Tina, because she needed the studio housed in the villino , Michelle the poet in the bungalow behind the laundry, with huge windows looking into the woods behind the castle.
    The others were in the keep itself; Tiziano the Venetian in the ground-floor suite on the corner, the Englishman on the top floor, with the Norwegian next door; they usually put guests of the same sex up there. Just in case, she supposed, though they all seemed to her to have their minds on anything but enjoyment; if Cate had learned anything since she got there about the artistic process, it was that it wasn’t much fun. The Dottoressa on the piano nobile below them, a corner of it turned into an apartment for the intern, but the Dottoressa had the lion’s share, great long windows looking down the cypress drive.
    ‘You do the coffee,’ Ginevra had said, preoccupied.
    She had come to rely on Cate for anything even slightly complicated. It had to be done in three relays; silver trays with insulated flasks of coffee – American style – hot and cold milk, cups, saucers, silver spoons, three kinds of sugar, biscuits and pastries. There were thirteen steps up to the old library: Ginevra couldn’t manage steps and was terrified of the small ancient, creaky lift; Nicki might be family but her English was non-existent so she had to be largely kept
to kitchen tasks and besides, she was clumsy. So Cate did it, just as she served every night at dinner, seven days a week, before heading home in the dark on her motorino .
    Last night she’d thought she might get home early, hadn’t she? Last night the guests had dispersed from the dining room nice and promptly, for once; sometimes they sat for hours guzzling the liqueurs while in the kitchen Ginevra and Cate snapped at each other, getting wearier and wearier. Waiting for them to leave. Last night the dining room had been empty by ten, and if it had been the three of them, it would have taken no more than half an hour to clear up. Only Ginevra had said Mauro wasn’t well, she had to get back, and when Ginevra went, so did Nicki, because Ginevra was too much of a nervous nelly to walk home in the dark alone.
    So Cate had to finish up on her own, and it had taken her an hour. She’d thought about that little settlement over the hill as she rinsed and stacked, Ginevra and Mauro in the run-down tied farm; Nicki in the two-room cottage adjoining it, with her widowed mother. No wonder Nicki looked unhappy most of the time.
    The money was good. But Cate really earned it.
    The library was Cate’s least favourite room of the castle, although the truth was there weren’t many rooms she did like. Her mother had been in awe, looking at the brochures she’d come home with after her interview, and Vincenzo very impressed at the thought that she’d be swishing around the place from ballroom to salotto like some kind of princess. But it quickly seemed to Cate that mediaeval