Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

she said. “Please.” And to Lorenzo, “Darling, stop being foolish. I’m
not
a buttercup. And I’m also not what matters just now. So do be quiet about doctors or leave us to talk because”—she took a breath to steady what she had to say, which she directed to Lynley—“you have word of something, I expect. Please tell me.”
    Lynley glanced at Lorenzo, who’d flushed. He had not sat and now he walked to the rear of the loggia, where he stood behind the chaise longue with his arms crossed and his birthmark darkening noticeably.
    Briefly, Lynley told Angelina of Carlo Casparia, of the “confession” extricated from the man by the public minister, and of Chief Inspector Lo Bianco’s doubts regarding this confession. He related the details of the search ongoing at the stables. He mentioned a possible sighting that had taken place in the Apuan Alps. He did not speak of a red convertible or of the exact nature of the sighting: a man leading a little girl into the woods. The first was something that needed to be held back from everyone. The second would only result in the woman’s terrified panic.
    “The police are looking into this,” he told her in reference to the Alps. “In the meantime, the tabloids . . .” He showed her the front page of
Prima Voce.
He discovered they had not seen the paper that day as neither of them had been into town to purchase a newspaper and none were delivered to the
fattoria
. “It’s best, I daresay, to disregard all this. They have only limited information.”
    Angelina was silent for a long moment during which the hammer blows from the old farmhouse sounded faintly. She finally said, “What does Hari think?” and behind her Lorenzo let out an exasperated breath. She said to him, “Renzo,
please
. . .”
    “
Sì, sì
,” Mura said.
    “He doesn’t know any of this yet,” Lynley told her, “unless he’s picked up the tabloid somewhere. He was already gone from the
pensione
when I came down to breakfast.”
    “
Gone?
” This incredulously from Lorenzo.
    “I expect he’s still putting up the missing-child handbills. It’s difficult for him—and for all of you, I know—just to be idle and have to wait for information.”
    “
Inutile
,” Lorenzo said.
    “Perhaps,” Lynley said. “But I’ve found that sometimes even an act that seems useless turns out to be the single action that breaks a case.”
    “He won’t return to London till she’s found.” Angelina looked out at the lawn, although there was nothing on it to hold her attention. She quietly said, “I do so regret what I did. I just wanted to be free of him, but I knew . . . I’m sorry about everything.”
    That desire to be free of other people, of life’s complexities, of the past that often clung to one like a ragtag group of mendicant children . . . This led people into the commission of acts that paved the way to remorse. But on the pathway to regret, the corpses of other people’s dreams often lay rotting. It was this that Lynley wished to talk about. But he wished to talk about it to Angelina alone, and not in the presence of her lover.
    He said to Lorenzo, “I’d like a few minutes alone with Angelina, if you don’t mind, Signor Mura.”
    Mura apparently did mind. He said, “We have no secrets from each other, Angelina and I. What you say to her can be said to me.”
    “I understand that,” Lynley said. “But because of our previous conversation—yours and mine . . . ?” Let the man think that what he had to say to Angelina Upman involved her health and getting her to town to see a doctor, Lynley thought. Anything to have the Italian man remove himself for a few minutes of conversation that, he suspected, would only be entirely honest if Mura absented himself from it.
    He did so, although with marked reluctance. He bent to Angelina first, and he kissed the top of her head. He said, “
Cara
,” quietly and then he left the loggia. He headed in the direction of the gates to the drive and the work that was going on beyond the tall hedge that marked off the old villa’s immediate grounds from the rest of the
fattoria
.
    Angelina turned her head to him by rolling it his way on the headrest of the chaise longue. She said, “What is it, Inspector Lynley? Is it about Hari? I know you can see . . . Renzo has no reason to be jealous of him. I give him no reason, and he
has
no reason. But the fact that Hari and I have a child . . . It’s created a bond where he’d prefer there