competence. She hasn’t learned that a shiny brass plate and hair going grey at the temples don’t amount to a row of beans.’
‘So.’ Lucius leant forward, his hands dropped between his knees. He was looking at his feet, shod in shiny black Oxfords; how he hated polished laced-up shoes.
‘So, do I think you should go? I don’t deal in shoulds, Lucius, you know that. Have you asked your father if he knows anything about this departed person?’
‘No.’
‘And you don’t intend to. Very wise. Any hint of an inheritance, and he’ll want to take over.’
‘I did ask Dolores. Whether she knew anything about Beatrice Malaspina.’ Dolores had worked for his father’s firm for more than thirty years, and she knew all the company’s and partners’ secrets. ‘And drew a blank. She said it meant nothing to her.’
‘You’re going to Italy, in any case,’ said his grandmother. ‘You haven’t come for advice.’
‘No, not really. I thought at first that the lawyers had made a mistake, but no, correct down to the last detail, who I was, where I lived and worked.’
‘They wouldn’t tell you about Beatrice Malaspina?’
‘Clams could learn a thing or two from them. Just acting on instructions from Italy, that’s all they’d say. I asked if Beatrice Malaspina had lived to a ripe old age. I mean, she could have turned out to be my contemporary, who knows?’
‘And?’
‘They did tell me that she had lived to a very good age. And that was all they’d give away.’
‘Naturally, you thought you’d come and ask one old relic if she knew another one.’
‘Perhaps she was a friend of Grandfather’s. That’s what I wondered.’
‘As I said, I never met anyone of that name.’
Lucius finished his drink and stood up. ‘Thank you, Miffy. I’ll write and let you know how I get on.’
‘Mind you do. I’m intrigued. I shall be keen to hear what is the secret of the Villa Dante. And what Beatrice Malaspina has left you.’
‘If it’s silver spoons, I’ll share them with you.’
‘Like I need silver spoons. Find yourself a clear conscience, Lucius, then you can send that back to me. We can all do with one of those.’
The mattresses of Delia’s girlhood had all been uncomfortable. Her austere father was a great believer in very firm mattresses; he slept with a sheet of wood beneath his own mattress; and urged the rest of his family and staff to do the same. ‘With a hard bed, the body relaxes, not the mattress.’
The mattresses at her Yorkshire boarding school had been thin, lumpy and set on a sagging mesh of strings; those at Girton College, Cambridge, were likewise meagre and designed to keep your mind on higher things than bodily comforts.
Which had left Delia a connoisseur of mattresses, and the one on Beatrice Malaspina’s bed was perfect, neither too hard nor too yielding; hooey to her father and his theories of relaxation. Nothing could be more relaxing or comfortable, and when she awoke to the sound of birdsong outside the windows, and saw sunlight filtering through the shutters, it was after a deep and untroubled night’s sleep, a rarity for her this winter, cursed as she was with bronchitis.
She slid out of bed and padded across the smooth dark red tiles to the windows: long, double windows stretching almost from the ceiling to the floor. She pulled them open and struggled for a few moments with the shutters before she found the catch and pushed them back against the walls.
Warm air drifted in as she stepped out on to a small terrace. The searing wind had gone, leaving only a slight breeze to make ripples on the red sand, warm and scrunchy under her bare feet.
Delia blinked at the unaccustomed brightness. It was too early in the morning for the sun to be high or hot, but there was a dazzling quality to the light that made her catch her breath. She looked out over a garden, once formal, now sadly overgrown, and saw a silvery gleam in the distance. It took her a few seconds to realise what it was. The sea! So the villa was on the coast.
Crashing sounds came from next door, and Jessica’s tousled head looked out of an adjacent window. ‘I say, you’ve got a balcony,’ she said.
Her head vanished, and then she was calling out to Delia from the door of her room.
‘Come out here, quick,’ Delia said. ‘You don’t want to miss a minute of it.’
They stood together, leaning on the stone balustrade and gazing out at the green and blue and silver vista.
Jessica let out a long sigh. ‘Heaven,’ she said. ‘Pure heaven. And can you hear Chanticleer out there?’
The vigorous cock crows mingled with the sonorous dong of a bell marking the hour.
‘Was that seven strokes? Oh, the air is so fresh it almost hurts to breathe.’
‘I do so hope this is the Villa Dante,’ Delia said. ‘We might find we have to decamp to a crumbling old house with no view and bedbugs in the mattresses.’
‘I hadn’t thought about bedbugs,’ Jessica said. ‘Still, no itchy bits this morning, and the bedrooms are quite up to date. It could have been all decayed fourposters with mouldering curtains, instead of which we get stylish art deco.’
‘The villa is old, though. Eighteenth-century, wouldn’t you think?’
‘Don’t ask me. Could be that, or older, or built fifty years ago. I think Italians, having found the kind of house they like, just go on building them. I’m going to get up, and let’s see what we can do about breakfast.’ Then, suddenly alert, ‘What’s that?’
Delia, lost in the view, came to. ‘Did you hear something?’
‘I think it was the gate. Hang on, we should be able to see it from one of the other rooms.’ She vanished, then called across to Delia. ‘A stout party in black coming up towards the house. At a guess, I’d say a servant.’
Delia didn’t want to greet the new arrival in her nightclothes, so she hurled herself into the bathroom that led off her bedroom, a huge and marbled affair, with, however, no more than a trickle of water coming out of the substantial taps. Five minutes later, she was washed and dressed and running down the stairs, clutching a red clothbound book. She caught up with Jessica, who was still in her pyjamas.
Voices were coming from the kitchen quarters. Delia pushed open the door, and there was the woman in black talking at great speed and at the top of her voice to a harassed-looking man with snow white hair and a wrinkled, deeply tanned face.
‘Buon giorno,’ Delia
