The Garden of Evil Read Online Free PDF Page B

meant to look that way, and not well orchestrated either. Someone was in a hurry. Look at the details. She’s on the floor. And there’s a perfectly good chaise longue over there. Why would they get down to it here? We would also have to assume that she killed him first, then expired herself. Remarkable in itself, and even more so if she then managed to lie down flat, quite unclothed, on a cold stone floor, all ready for the grave. No—”
    Falcone held up a lean, tanned hand, demanding silence. “Enough,” he said quietly. “Leave us something to do. Please. Clearly we are meant to believe something here.”
    “Aldo Caviglia couldn’t hurt a fly,” Peroni insisted. “Why would someone pick on a poor old soul like him?”
    “That’s what we’re supposed to find out,” Costa said automatically, and was shocked that it sounded like an admonition.
    “Thank you,” Peroni said quietly. “Sir.”
    “Blue lips,” Costa murmured, ignoring him.
    Teresa was staring at the dead woman’s face, interested, but worried also, it seemed to Costa, by the distance there had to be between a
sovrintendente
and an
agente
who was more than twenty years his senior.
    “Quite,” she said. “Do you notice the smell?”
    “I thought this whole place smelled bad,” Costa said. “Drains.”
    She grimaced, as if she’d missed something important. “It does stink, you’re right. But she has a particular smell. A little like sweaty socks, in case you’re too polite to say.”
    “Is it unusual?” he asked.
    “Not around any cops I know,” she answered. “But on a woman like this?”
    Watched by Falcone, Costa knelt down and leaned over the corpse. The smell was obvious: direct and pungent.
    “It takes an hour or so to degrade that much,” Teresa remarked.
    “What does?” Falcone demanded.
    “Amyl nitrate.”
    “A sex drug?” Costa asked, astonished.
    “Hold on there,” the pathologist cautioned. “Amyl nitrate is a very useful pharmaceutical in the right circumstances.” She was staring directly at Costa, challenging him to think. “It’s relief for angina. And emergency revival in heart cases.”
    “Blue lips,” he said again.
    “Quite.” She was grinning. “No wonder you promoted him, Leo.”
    Falcone sighed. “So this woman died of a heart attack. During sex? And the drug was there either for stimulation or to revive her?”
    “I am merely a pathologist,” Teresa replied. She held out a hand. Peroni took it and helped her to her feet. “If I’m to help you with the rest, I need to get these two out of here and safe and warm to my lair. We have everything we’re going to get
in situ
. Silvio can stay behind and supervise the rest. I’ll need her medical history from Paris. You don’t mind if we handle that?”
    “No,” the inspector said, nodding. “Just the medical side. You agree?”
    “Of course,” she concurred, smiling pleasantly.
    “I told you Caviglia didn’t do it!” Peroni pointed out.
    She smiled and patted his arm. “So you did. Good for you.”
    “He stole her wallet, though,” Falcone added. “He came here for some reason. He saw something . . .”
    The room had gone quiet. The other officers who’d been working alongside the forensic team waited, except for the pair who seemed to be lifting some loose masonry close to the rotting iron window.
    “Perhaps he saw this,” Costa suggested. He walked over to the large easel behind the corpses and, very carefully, removed the green velvet drape, exposing the canvas.
    Not a word was uttered for a good half a minute. Not a breath even, it seemed.
    “Perhaps he did,” Tereasa whispered, breaking the silence.

    NO ONE COULD TAKE THEIR EYES OFF THE PAINTING. EVEN THE
presence of two corpses, one clearly murdered, the other dead through strange and suspicious circumstances, did nothing to distract their attention from the canvas at that moment.
    Falcone walked over to join Costa, his gaze fixed on the shining naked form,