A talk with Juliet

…

If I had the time over again, I might have chosen a different path in advising her of the possible connection to the Burkhardt’s, but that cat was now out of the bag.  I had to play that card when the police started asking difficult questions.  It’s a bit hard to give a plausible reason for people shooting at you.

“It’s possible but unlikely, but it seems someone thinks you might be, hence the assassination attempt.”

“Do you think my father was the Count, and my mother one of the servants?”  There was a curious inflection in her tone like she was mentally calculating the billions she might be worth.

“What did your adoptive mother tell you about your father, other than he was important?

“Nothing.”

“Then the description ‘important person’ could be the butler or the head gardener to a lowly servant girl, so I wouldn’t be getting too many ideas.  The count has never admitted to having any children outside of marriage, and, in fact, had only one surviving family member, the countess.  Have you ever met her?”

“Seen her only in papers, and once from afar when I was watching the house in Sorrento.  Head gardener or butler, you do know how to dash a girl’s dreams.”

“Better to understand the reality before the family lawyers shred you in court if you try to press any sort of a claim.  And if they do know about you, and they believed you were an heir, then you could be in trouble.”

“You seem to know a lot about the family.  Are you working for them?”

An astute observation.  “The answer to that question is no.  My only interest in this was to escort the countess to the Opera as a favour to the man whom I used to work for, yes, I’m still retired, or getting there.  So, I’ve met the countess, but she never mentioned anything about children, only the count dying on her, and now, from my boss, the fact she is missing.  The truth of the matter, I’m only here to find the countess, then I’m back to Venice, or Paris, or anywhere other than here.”

“But there’s more to it than that.  I know you, there’s wheels within wheels.”

There might be, but I wasn’t going to humour her.  “Well, if she’s missing and doesn’t sign the inheritance papers, the estate goes to the next brother, Alessandro.  If he was aware there was a possibly more direct heir, if the count was your father, his situation would demand that you were eliminated from the list.  If he was that way inclined.”

“Then he’s your man.”

“He’s not.  I’ve spoken to him already.  But I have another more viable candidate, your birth mother, who could tell us if the count was your father, though, as a servant girl, and later criminal, I doubt the courts would believe her.”

“You know who my birth mother is then?”  it was spoken with a little more curiosity than she should, which told me she already knew and was covering it.  I wondered if Ceceila had any success.  I would sneak away and send her a text soon.  And ask her to drop in if she could.

“We think we do.”  After analysing everything Juliet said, and the physical evidence we had, like the photograph, it was possible that Vittoria was not.  All the evidence we had was circumstantial.

The waiter chose to arrive at our table with the pizza, and I decided we had to eat first, leaving her with a look of annoyance.  It could wait another few minutes, time taken to look at her and for any resemblance to Vittoria and the Count.  It seemed to me there was none, but Cecilia would know.  Time to send her a text to meet us at the restaurant, and what I wanted her to do.  I excused myself and went to the restrooms.

Just before I went in the door I glanced back and saw she was on the phone.  Who could she be calling?

When I came back, I decided to keep going down the direct route.  “Do you know a woman by the name of Vittoria Romano?”

I watched her carefully as I asked the question.  Everyone had a tell, and I think I knew hers.

“Should I?”

The curious thing about that reply was another of those inflections in her tone, one that told me she did.

That just added a whole new layer to the game.  It also told me why she was not so shaken up by the turn of events.  It might have been a surprise to see me, but not getting shot at.

“I have reason to believe she is your mother.  She has been trying to get closer to Alessandro, but the countess had warned him of her intentions.  We understand this Vittoria was getting a payment to look after you, whether by blackmail or otherwise, and when that stopped, she started making trouble.    She is, by the way, in London at the moment though we don’t know where.”

“And you think I might?”

“If I accompanied you to your apartment, would she be there?”

“I said I didn’t know her.”  She tried to put on an aggrieved tome that I would think that she was lying.

“You’ve said a lot of things in the past, especially to me, that are not true.  We know each other fairly well, Juliet.”

That tone was now accompanied by a pained expression that was mean to convey annoyance.  “I should get up and walk out, but as you say, we know each other fairly well, and I’m guessing you’d construe that as guilt.  I am disappointed.”

I saw Cecilia arrive outside, and now that the restaurant was quite full, she was easily able to get to our table without Juliet seeing her, not until she dropped into the third seat, and sigh, “Do you have any idea what it’s like getting across this city in the rush hour?”

The look on Juliet’s face was priceless.

© Charles Heath 2023

Attack!

…

It seemed to me that trouble gravitated towards Juliet, especially when I was around.  Perhaps between the two of us we had that sort of chemistry going.  The sort that attracted bullets.

She had got up to collect her computer from a desk on one side of the dais, and I had just turned after taking her hand to assist her off the dais when I caught sight of a movement out of the corner of my eye, and with barely enough time to consider what it was, I pushed her to one side and dived towards the floor, feeling the plucking effect of a bullet ripping at my sleeve.

“What the…”, was as much as she got to say before she too realised, we were being shot at from the top of the aisle, bullets thumping into the floorboards barely inches from us as we scrabbled to get behind the seats of the first aisle.

Nineteen shots from a silenced gun, then silence.

Was the shooter reloading.

“Is everything alright in here?”  A deep male voice yelled out from above.

Was it the shooter of our saviour?

Juliet put her head above the seats and recognised the man and slowly dragged herself up from the floor.

“Mr Roberts.”

“Is everything alright?”

“No.  We were just shot at by someone up there on the other side of the hall.  Be careful.”

I slowly got up, shook out my clothes and saw the tear from the bullet.  Any closer would have hit my arm and another injury.

“Are you alright?” I asked her.

She glared at me.  “Who did you bring with you?”

“No one.  I made sure no one was following me.  Of that much, you can be assured.  Whoever it was, they were here for you.”

“And you being here, you know who it is?”

The man from the top of the hall, invisible, yelled out, “There’s no one up here now.”

“You’d better call the police.  We have a wrecked floor with bullet holes in it.  It might give some indication of who was shooting at us.”

He came out from behind a wall near the top row of seats.  “What do you mean, shooting at you?  Bullet holes?”

He came down the steps and Juliet took him over to where we were standing when the shots started.  “Why would anyone be shooting at you?”  He looked at the damage to the floor and groaned.

“This is all I need.  The place is booked solid.”

She looked at me.  “Evan?”

“It seems you might be entitled to a share of an estate worth quite a lot of money, and there are people who might not want you to inherit what they think is theirs, not yours.”

She had an expression that conveyed a degree of astonishment, not forced, which told me that it was a surprise.

I don’t know anyone who would have that sort of money.”

“Not immediately, but perhaps we should wait for the police, then have a talk about it.  I was hoping we could have a few glasses of wine first, but that’s not going to be possible.”

The police came and looked at the crime scene, and then one of the constables called a detective who also looked at the crime scene, who then called in the forensic team. 

The hall manager was told the hall would be out of action for a few days, the last news he needed to hear.

The detective asked Juliet a half dozen quests, the usual like, do you know anyone who would want to shoot at you, do you have any criminal connections, a interesting question she answered with a qualified yes, the man was now dead, and did you see anyone suspicious now or earlier in the day, where she was staying, a friend’s apartment in Bloomsbury, how long was she in the city, what she was doing here, and how long was she staying.

It answered nearly all of the questions I’d intended to ask her.

The detective looked at me, asked me why I was there, and was it possible I was the target.  Of course, I had to ask him why he thought I was, so he asked me my profession, and I told him that I was a journalist specializing in Archaeology, which I was.  She too learned where I lived, answers that seemed to amuse her.

Especially the one where he asked what the nature of our relationship was.  I let her answer with exes catching up. 

When he was done, an hour and a half later, along with the forensic team, we were allowed to go.  Her lecture the next day was now not going to happen, calls going to the organisers, and the hall owners.

“Well,” she said, once everyone had left, “you now owe me dinner, and some of your time tomorrow since I now have a free day.”

“You don’t seem overly worried that people are trying to kill you.”

“Why should I.  You’re here to protect me, are you not?”

I don’t think that was in the terms of my remit.

© Charles Heath 2023