Suddenly floodlights illuminated the grounds, dazzling him. Two dark shapes bounded round from the back of the villa. They looked like small, swift ponies except that they turned out to be large, swift alsatians. They leaped playfully up on Pascolo who, Webb thought, should have gone down like a skittle by the laws of Newtonian mechanics.
“Ciao, Adolfo, come stai?” Ivrea cried, pulling at their ears. “Ed anche tu, Benito! and now, professore, I take you to my aunt. Basta, ragazzi! She is a grand woman. You stay here with us.” The dogs were bounding excitedly around Webb now, and beginning to snarl. Pascolo roared at them and they fell away obediently.
She was waiting for them at the main door, in a flood of light. She was tall, dressed in the traditional black, with bright, alert eyes set in a deeply wrinkled face. She smiled courteously and raised her hand in the fascist salute. “Buon Natale,” she said in a firm voice. Educated Florentine accent, Webb thought, not the coarse peasant dialect of Pascolo Ivrea.
“Ah, Merry Christmas. How do you do?” Webb replied in his best Italian. “You are very kind to let me come here,” he added, as if he had a choice.
The woman smiled. “The English are good people. Pascolo, the dogs, must I teach you manners? Now, professor, please let me show you my home.”
Mussolini was a good man. Il Duce stared at Webb from every square foot of the hallway. Old photographs showed him looking noble, looking thoughtful, looking inspirational. Here he was, the great horseman, the great poet, the bluff countryman. Il Duce and her father went back to childhood. Papa had looked after the countryside for the fascisti and the Leader. Everyone was with him. In the good times Benito would come here to relax, when he had to get away from the plotters and the schemers in Rome.
And here am I with Papa, the old lady said with quiet pride, pointing to a slim, attractive teenage girl standing beside a horse and a tall thin man with riding crop and boots. Next to them was a relaxed and smiling Mussolini, looking quite human, Webb thought, when he wasn’t posturing. Benito, Papa used to say, whatever happens anywhere else, do not worry about here. Here in the hills the people are with you; they understand you. That was before the traitors and the partisans, of course.
Of course, Webb said.
Then there were the slippers of some pope in a glass case, more faded pictures of Mussolini looking noble, a brick from some holy place, and a tiny private chapel, candles freshly lit. Then the old lady excused herself, disappearing along a corridor, and Pascolo explained that he would be taking her to her beach house at Terracina in the morning but please to follow me, professore.
Webb followed Pascolo up marble stairs to a landing. The man opened a solid oak door. The room was large, plain and comfortable. It had a double bed, a chest of drawers and a large desk, and a shower room led off. The desk came with an Anglepoise lamp, a pile of paper and a couple of pens, but not, a quick scan revealed, with Phaenomenis Novae. French windows led out to a broad balcony.
“Va bene?” Pascolo asked.
“First class, Pascolo. Do you leave early tomorrow?”
“Si.”
“Do you have something for me?” Webb kept his voice casual.
There was no hesitation. “Sure, professore. I go with my aunt now to collect it.”
At least, Webb thought, he could contemplate the business of escape. Webb wandered round the big empty mausoleum. A Christmas tree about nine feet tall, decorated with illuminated bells, looked lost in the big sitting room. There was no telephone. He went out to the grounds. Adolfo and Benito leapt around playfully enough and then chased each other around the house. Over the low balustrade the ground swept down for about three thousand feet to a plain which stretched into the haze. Webb thought he could see a thin glimmering strip on the horizon, like the sea reflecting moonlight, maybe fifty miles away. He could see that the village was dominated by a cathedral, lit up for Christmas.
The motorway, the one along which Webb had been taken, was the autostrada del sole connecting Rome and Naples. Lights were drifting up and down it. He reckoned he was about fifty miles south of Rome, probably north of Cassino, south of Frosinone. That put him high in the Abruzzi Hills. Down on the autostrada, modern Italy flowed briskly past; up here, they ticked off the calendar in centuries.
He went out the main gate and set off down the hill. The village seemed deserted. He passed a big white building, like a cantina, which had open ground in front of it and wooden benches and chairs laid out, damp with dew. He walked down the narrow, steep street. Wizened faces looked out of windows. Conversations stopped as he approached and started up again as he passed.
The cathedral was a masterpiece of frescos. Its high altar was a blaze of candles. It was also empty. Webb went back up the street.
“Il padre?” he called up to an ancient hag, wrinkled and nearly toothless. There was a voice from the back of the room, and an outburst of gabbling from other houses. Then a stream of something incomprehensible was aimed at Webb from several directions at once. He heard “solo domenica” a few times.
He tried “Servizio postale?” There was an outburst of cackling; he’d said something funny. Someone told him to collect it at Genzano. More faces were appearing at windows.
Webb had one last shot, a throwaway to which he already knew the answer: “È un telefono qui?”
More merriment. The Man from Mars was proving an endless source of fun.
In an hour the dogs started barking and a small, blue, rusty Fiat turned into the drive and disgorged Pascolo, a little fat wife and an amazing brood of children. The children swirled around the house, teased the dogs and threw things over the garden wall and into the fountain.
Dinner in the big kitchen seemed to make no allowance for Christmas. It was an affair of huge steaming pots, huge plates of spaghetti al sugo, huge tumblers of cold white wine and tiny humans leaping off in random directions without warning. Pascolo’s wife smiled and nodded and chattered away in some thick dialect of which Webb caught about one word in ten. They told him the wine came from his fascist aunt’s vineyards and he declared it to be superb which explained why he was drinking so much. After dessert — a massive, cream-covered treacle tart — Pascolo vanished.
Webb, his nails unconsciously digging into the table-cover, waited for the manuscript. After twenty minutes he gave up and plodded up to his room. He kicked a chair in frustration and flopped on to the hard mattress. Pascolo had radiated simple honesty for the entire evening, giving nothing away — maybe because he had nothing to give.
There was a knock at the door. Webb stood up apprehensively, dreading the appearance of Walkinshaw’s killers. But it was only the old lady. In her hand was a small red leather book. Webb sensed that she wanted to talk; he indicated a chair and sat on the edge of the bed.
“You are a scholar. You study history.”
“That is so.”
“How did you learn that I have the book?”
Webb tried a lie. “The Father Apiarist.”
She smiled with pleasure. “Ebbene! At last Franco has spoken. That was a bad night.”
“A bad night?”
Her eyes seemed to look beyond Webb. “Many terrible things were done, all those years ago. You are sure that he did explain?”