Page 18 of Murder at Christmas

I had to wait a few seconds before he replied, his tone cautious. ‘Yes, Dan, go for it, but be careful and make sure you can find your way back.’

The snow continued to fall relentlessly, and our footprints in the snow were already being covered up by the time I got to the spot where the other path forked off. I turned down it and immediately found it far trickier walking on a surface that wasn’t always as level as the track had been. For his part, Oscar launched himself into the deeper snow with gay abandon, almost disappearing from sight at times except for a black tail sticking up in the air, still wagging excitedly.

A bulky shadow loomed ahead of me and I realised that we had reached the big boulder where the track began to curl back towards the villa once more. I saw Oscar’s tail sticking up out of a deeper patch of snow and I was about to call him when he suddenly jumped back and started barking. This in itself was most unusual. Oscar doesn’t woof a lot, and there’s normally a reason if he starts barking. The other unusual thing was that he started excavating furiously, spraying snow out behind him. I struggled through the snow to get to him and stopped dead whenI reached him. There could be no doubt about it. His desperate digging was an attempt to unearth something virtually invisible under the fresh snow.

It was a man’s body, lying face down, and he was wearing a red anorak. As I cleared the snow around his head, a grim sensation of impending doom told me what I was going to find. I reached down and rested my hand against the side of his throat. His skin was cool, but not yet frozen. The trouble was that I could feel no pulse.

Bartolomeo Viviani was dead.

* * *

I called Umberto to report my find and my position, and he replied less than a minute later to tell me that Paolo was on his way. By the time Paolo and Winston arrived, I had cleared almost all of the snow from Bartolomeo’s body. Although I’m no pathologist, I have enough experience to know that he must have died quite recently – recently enough for the extreme cold to have cooled his exposed skin but not yet reached his core. I also didn’t need to be a pathologist to see the awful wound to the back of his head that had crushed his skull and killed him. I glanced up at the surface of the boulder above me, wondering if the wound might have been caused by a fall, and immediately found what looked like the culprit. Directly in front of me, level with my chest, was a rough outcrop of rock and, even with a light covering of snow, there was enough staining around it for me to feel sure that this had caused the massive trauma to Bartolomeo’s head. What had he been doing up on top of the boulder, and how had he managed to fall off it?

Had he fallen, had he jumped, or had he been pushed?

Winston arrived before Paolo and when he caught sight of his master’s body, he stopped in horror and began emittingplaintive little whines. Oscar had positioned himself alongside me, and it was clear that both dogs were shocked. I called Winston over to my other side and stroked his ears. I have a bit more experience of violent death than most people – or dogs – but it had also come as a shock to me to see this man who had been alive and well only a few hours ago now lying here stone dead.

The crunch of footsteps in the snow roused me. ‘Is he dead?’

I looked up to see Paolo at my shoulder, looking grim, and I nodded. ‘I’m afraid so. The back of his skull has been crushed. He didn’t stand a chance.’

‘But how… do you think he fell?’ He sounded stunned.

I pointed at the bloodstained outcrop of rock alongside us. ‘That’s what it looks like, and he landed on this, but what on earth was he doing up on top of this huge boulder?’

Paolo’s face paled visibly and I thought for a moment that he was about to faint. I gave him a while to collect himself, and his answer, when it came, surprised me.

‘That’s what he called the Crows’ Nest, you know, the place at the top of the masts of the old ships where the lookout used to be stationed. Archaeologists say this boulder was once used by primitive man, and there are strange bowl-shaped carvings or indentations in the rock up there that they think might have been used for ritual sacrifice – animal or human. They’re calledcoppelleand that’s where the name of the villa came from. Personally, I think the place is a bit creepy, but from up there, there’s a terrific view down the valley all the way as far as Ponte di Mezzo and beyond. Bartolomeo loved it and even got me to fashion a bench up there for him to sit on. It was very normal for him to climb up there, but I find it hard to believe that he could have fallen off.’

‘Maybe it was slippery in the snow.’

Paolo nodded his head. ‘I suppose that was what happened. He must have walked down here and then climbed up onto the boulder for a few minutes to enjoy the view before the snow made it impossible. Maybe he didn’t realise how slippery it had got and somehow, he managed to fall off, leaving Winston down here on his own.’

I nodded slowly in agreement. It seemed logical, although I still wasn’t totally convinced that it had been an accident.

‘When did he set off on his walk?’

‘He went out about half-past one, and it started snowing about three quarters of an hour ago, just after two, say two-fifteen. Instead of lunch, he’d told me to make a snack for him and Signor Naselli today at noon – he wanted to work through, you see – and once the meeting had finished, he took Winston out for a walk to clear his head.’

‘So he might have come up here before the snow started?’

‘Yes, but how on earth did he fall off unless it was slippery with snow and ice? He knew it so well. All I can assume is that he climbed up before the snow started, sat down to admire the view, and by the time he decided to climb down, it had got treacherous and he fell.’

He had a point. I looked down at the big dog, who was pressed tightly against my legs, almost pushing me over with his considerable weight. ‘If only you could tell us what happened, Winston.’ I glanced back up at Paolo again. ‘I’m surprised Winston didn’t try to lead you back here. He must have known that his owner was in a bad way, or even already dead.’

Paolo cast an affectionate glance down at the big dog, who was still whining piteously. ‘For such a big animal, he’s really got a very little brain.’ He reached over and stroked Winston’s snow-covered head. ‘I’m sure your Labrador is far smarter than he is. When’s the last time you saw one of these working as a guide dog for the blind?’

I reflected on what Paolo had just said about the timings. I felt it most likely that Bartolomeo had come down here before the snow had started and, given that his body had still been vaguely warm to the touch, I reckoned he had probably been dead for only an hour or so. I couldn’t help wondering where everybody else had been between one-thirty and two-thirty. Might somebody have followed him from the villa, climbed up the rock after him and pushed him to his death?

12

TUESDAY AFTERNOON

Although best practice dictates that a potential murder scene should not be touched before the arrival of the police, I decided to move Bartolomeo’s body back to the villa for several reasons. The first reason was because it looked as though it might well have been an unfortunate accident, and so this was not in fact a murder scene, secondly because the snow was now a foot or more deep in places and, more significantly, the wind was beginning to get up and create deeper drifts, and there was no way of knowing if the police would be able to get up here today. There was a real risk of the body being completely submerged. But the main reason I didn’t insist on leaving the body out here was because I wanted to play down any hint of murder as a possibility for now. If we really did have a killer in our midst at the villa, I didn’t want to alert him or her, but I didn’t voice this to Paolo. As far as I was concerned, there were only three people at the moment with rock-hard alibis, and these were Anna, Fiona and me – because we hadn’t been here. Everybody else, even Paolo, had to be considered as a potential suspect.

Getting the body back to the villa turned out to be easier than I had feared. Paolo took a heartbroken Winston with him andleft me to keep guard over the body while he hurried back to the villa to get what he referred to as the timber sledge. While waiting for him to return with the sledge, Oscar and I walked around the huge boulder until I found what was obviously the way up. Somewhere in the mists of time, the rock had split, forming a narrow pathway in a gulley leading up to the top, in which somebody had sculpted some crude steps. It looked as though it should be easy enough to climb under normal circumstances but, with several feet of drifting snow lying on the steps, I heeded Anna’s instructions and didn’t do anything silly. There was no point in risking falling off the rock myself.

The sight of the snow-covered access also conformed my belief that Bartolomeo wouldn’t have risked climbing up after the snow had started – but if it had been dry up there, how had he managed to lose his footing and fall to his death? If it had been an accident, then Paolo’s hypothesis was probably the most likely – he had climbed up before the snow had started to fall but had been caught out by its sudden arrival. It occurred to me that alcohol might also have had something to do with it. Maybe he had partaken too liberally of the contents of his hip flask while admiring the view. The accidental-death scenario definitely had legs – but did I really believe it?