Inspector Lynley 18 - Just One Evil Act

the acid. She had been desperate when she’d done it, but she’d never been a fool.
    “
Grazie per avermi incontrato
,” Salvatore told her. She was busy and to take time from her schedule to meet him here in the piazza was an act of friendship he would remember.
    She sat and took his offered cigarette. He lit it for her, lit one for himself, and raised his chin at a waiter lingering by the door that led into the café’s interior with its display of baked goods. When the waiter advanced upon them, Cinzia glanced at her watch and ordered a
cappuccino
. Salvatore requested another
caffè macchiato
. He shook his head at the offer of
un dolce
. Cinzia did the same.
    She leaned back in her chair and gazed at the piazza. Across from them beneath a loggia, a guitarist, a violinist, and an accordionist were setting up shop for the day. Next to them, a
venditore dei fiori
did likewise, filling buckets with bouquets.
    “Lorenzo Mura came to see me last evening,” Salvatore told her. “
Che cos’è successo?
”
    Cinzia drew in on her cigarette. Like a woman of fifty years in the past, she made cigarette smoking look glamorous. She needed to give it up, as did he. They would both die of it if they were not careful. She said, “Ah. Signora Upman, no? Her kidneys failed, Salvatore. They were failing all along, but because of the pregnancy . . .” She flicked ash expertly from the cigarette. “Doctors don’t know it all. We put our faith in them when often we should listen to what our bodies are telling us instead. Her doctor heard from her some symptoms: vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration. A bit of spoiled food, he decided, along with the morning sickness, was at the root of the problem. She was in a delicate state anyway—susceptible to illness, eh?—so perhaps a bug of some sort had easy access to her system. Give her much fluid, take a family history from her, do a few tests, and in the meantime, just for safety’s sake, treat her with a course of antibiotics.” Again she drew in on her cigarette. Again she tapped it on an ashtray at the table’s centre, and she added, “I suspect he killed her.”
    “Signor Mura?”
    She eyed him. “I speak of the doctor, Salvatore.”
    He said nothing for a moment as their coffees were placed on their table. The waiter took a quick opportunity to gaze admiringly at Cinzia’s cleavage, and he winked at Salvatore. Salvatore frowned. The waiter departed hastily.
    Salvatore said, “How?”
    “I suspect his treatment did the job. Consider, Salvatore: A pregnant woman goes to hospital. She presents her symptoms to the doctor. She can keep nothing in her system. She is weak, dehydrated. There is blood in her stool and this suggests something more is involved than morning sickness, but no one living with her is ill—an important point, my friend—and no one elsewhere has presented the same symptoms. So an assumption is made and a course of treatment that grows from that assumption is prescribed. In the ordinary way of things, this course of treatment would not kill her. It might not cure her, but it would not kill her. Her condition improves, and she goes home. Yet the sickness returns in double force, in triple force. And then she dies.”
    “Poison?” Salvatore said.
    “
Forse
,” she replied, but she looked thoughtful. “I suspect, though, it is not the kind of poison we think of when the word itself is said. You see, we consider poison as something introduced: into food, into water, into the air we breathe, into a substance we use in the ordinary course of events in our lives. We do not think of poison as something produced within us because of an error on the part of our doctors, these fallible people in whom we place our trust.”
    “You’re saying that something the
doctors
did triggered a poison inside her body?”
    Cinzia nodded. “That is what I’m saying.”
    “This is possible, Cinzia?”
    “It is indeed.”
    “Can it be proven? Can it be established for Signor Mura that no one is at fault in this matter? What I mean is that no one poisoned her. Can this be established?”
    She glanced at him as she stubbed out her cigarette. “Ah, Salvatore,” she said. “You misunderstand me. That no one is involved in her death? That this was merely a terrible mistake on the part of her doctors? My friend, that is not what I’m saying at all.”

11 May
    LUCCA
    TUSCANY
    S he was not Catholic but the Mura family had extraordinary influence, so she was given a