"Nothing's been touched," said Harry.
This wasn't quite true. There were a couple of wooden filing cabinets in the corner. Their contents had been searched, the papers hastily replaced on the shelves. A few stray files lay shrouded in dust on the floor, like flatfish waiting for prey.
The next room was a corner room, and clearly the Germans' operations center. There were metal desks and cabinets, and a letterboard with cross-garterings was attached to the wall. A couple of typewriters had not made the last truck out, and judging from the ashes heaped in the grate, a large amount of paperwork had ended up as smoke. Harry seemed more than happy to poke around, so Adam slipped away.
He returned to the scene of the shooting and tried to picture the events unfolding around him: Emilio and Maurizio coming through the door, the two Germans busy at the window, their backs turned, oblivious to the fact that they had company because of the music blaring from the gramophone player. He saw Emilio taking in the destruction around him—the broken mirror, the bullet holes in the ceiling frescoes—before leveling his gun at the gramophone and firing.
It was easy to imagine an argument ensuing, as Chiara had described. What else had she said? That Emilio was standing near the fireplace when he was shot.
Adam wandered over. He examined the marble surround and the walls on both sides for evidence of a stray shot, but found nothing. That's when he noticed that the rug in front of the hearth was not centered. It had been dragged a few feet to one side. He crouched down and folded back the edge of the rug.
The stain was large and irregular. Emilio had bled a lot.
The pool of blood was still fresh when it had been covered up, judging from the mirror impression on the underside of the rug. This wasn't what attracted Adam's attention, though—it was the bullet hole in the boards near the middle of the stain, easy to miss if it hadn't been for the slanting light.
He leaned closer, running his finger around the rim of the depression. As with the gramophone player, there were score marks in the wood where the bullet had been removed. This must have occurred sometime after the event, or fresh blood would have seeped into the notches, whereas clean new wood showed through them.
The bullet might have vanished, but the grim truth remained: Emilio had not been fired on by the German from across the room; he had been executed at close range when already on the floor.
Hearing Harry returning, Adam folded back the rug and got to his feet.
The rest of the day passed in a mist of distraction. Harry made a phone call, then announced he was heading into town. It was his last chance to see the Swedish Finn. Her boyfriend would be back at the weekend, and Harry planned to leave for Venice on Sunday.
"A day to recover from the party, then I'm out of your hair. Tell me you'll miss me."
"I'll miss you."
"That was almost convincing."
"It's true."
"Then this might be the time to talk about you advancing me a small loan for the rest of my trip."
"As soon as I've figured out what my own plans are."
Which was easier said than done.
He felt numb, incapable of clear thought, after the discovery on the top floor. It was the closest thing to hard evidence against Maurizio—no, the only thing so far that approximated any kind of evidence. The rest was speculation rooted in hearsay and intuition.
The bullet hole in the floorboards changed everything. Emilio had been executed while on the floor. This was completely at odds with Maurizio and Gaetano's account of what happened that night, and pointed to their collusion in the killing. As for Benedetto, it was clear now that he had indeed discovered the truth. Who other than Benedetto had gouged the bullets free from the floor and the gramophone player? Torn between bringing down his only remaining son and doing nothing, Benedetto had opted for a third way—sealing off the top floor and burying Emilio in the family chapel, stark and close reminders to Maurizio of his heinous crime.
But Benedetto had not stopped there. His bizarre behavior in the immediate aftermath of Emilio's death hinted at another agenda. In closing the top floor, he had preserved the scene of the crime, with its telltale clues. Why had he done this? So that someone else might one day decipher the truth? And why had he then taken Emilio's gun and secreted it behind the plaque in the chapel, along with the bullets? Because those relics of the murder offered hard, ballistic proof that Emilio had been killed with his own weapon? It seemed quite likely. It seemed more than likely.
This was all well and good, except for the fact that Adam now found himself caught on the horns of the biggest dilemma of his life. Should he act, or do as Benedetto had done: nothing? Why should he pursue the matter further, when the victim's own father had chosen not to do so? This was a serious business. This was murder. And it surprised him that the enormity of what he had embarked on hadn't occurred to him before.
His instinct was to make for the memorial garden. It was where he usually went to gather his thoughts. Not this time, though. If he was going to face some plain and hard truths, he couldn't risk exposing himself to its influence.
It was a preposterous notion, and not one he would have shared with any soul, but he still had the uneasy feeling that Flora Bonfadio, dead in 1548, was largely responsible for his current predicament. She had set him on his course, and she had been illuminating his path ever since. The flash of guilt in Maurizio's eyes, the revelation about Emilio's paternity—other insights too—all had come to him while passing through her kingdom.
Nor could he rid himself of the sensation that she had also exercised a similar control over matters relating more directly to her. She had nudged, cajoled and teased him, revealing her own tragic story to him piecemeal, as if by will. How could he be expected to enjoy a dinner in his honor when he had discovered nothing that she hadn't already chosen to share with him? And now that she had finally broken her centuries-old silence, why did he have the unnerving sensation that she expected something from him in return?
No, the memorial garden was not the place to head in search of clarity. He needed distance, and lots of it. Which was why he made for his bicycle and peddled off into the hills.
The moment he saw the sign, he knew that's where he would go. Sant'Andrea in Percussina was not so much a village as a hamlet strung out along a country road, the sort of place you passed through without so much as a second glance or thought. But if Fausto was to be believed, it was here that Niccolo Machiavelli had written one of the world's most controversial and prophetic works of political science: II Principe.
Fausto was right. The first person Adam collared directed him to the modest stone property that had once been Machiavelli's country residence. It lay dormant, the windows shuttered against more than the heat. He walked around to the overgrown garden at the back and tried to imagine Machiavelli strolling there, hatching his ideas, or hunched at a table, scratching away with a pen.
He knew the book well. It was short, to the point, uncompromising in its opinions—a manual for rulers on how to obtain and maintain political power. Machiavelli didn't shy from the more unpleasant realities of the political world. Anything was acceptable just so long as it served the primary goaclass="underline" the survival of the state. This took precedence over all else. Even religious and moral imperatives were to be ignored by a ruler if they vied with his own interests.
Men of all political persuasions had bent Machiavelli's model of statecraft to their own ends over the intervening centuries, and Adam now found himself drawing guidance from The Prince, from the bald pragmatism that suffused the book.