Page 9 of Murder at the Ponte Vecchio

‘He was very selfish. All that counted for him was himself and his business.’

‘Was it a big business? After all, it was only a small boutique on the Ponte Vecchio.’

She scoffed. ‘It was a big business, all right. The shop was only the icing on the cake. His main activity was as a wholesaler of precious stones and precious metals. I can remember numerous occasions when he came home with a heavy bag and told me there were hundreds of thousands of euros’ worth of gold or precious stones inside it.’

‘Was it a common occurrence for him to bring high-value merchandise back here?’

‘Maybe not every night, but he preferred to keep his valuables in the safe here, rather than at the Ponte Vecchio. As you came in, you maybe noticed the security system we have here. This place is like Fort Knox.’

‘Do you think there’s much in the safe now?’

‘I have no idea. You should go and take a look for yourselves, but I’m not sure how you’re going to get into it. I don’t know the combination and, to the best of my knowledge, now that SignorBerg’s dead, neither does anybody else. I can let you into his study, but from then on, you’re on your own.’ She even managed a hint of a smile. ‘I imagine you’ll need dynamite.’

I saw Marco shoot a glance towards the kitchen door and he lowered his voice even though we were speaking Italian. ‘Tell me about the family group who have assembled here. Presumably, Signor Berg must have informed you that they were coming.’

The smile disappeared from her face. ‘Yes, he told me, last month in fact. From the way he spoke about them, I could tell he wasn’t looking forward to seeing them but, considering that he went off and left his wife and children all those years ago and hasn’t been back in touch with them since, I would imagine they felt very similarly about him. The one with the short hair, Luuc, in particular has been looking like a bear with a sore head.’

‘Can you remember anything Signor Berg said about them? We’re trying to work out exactly why he decided to restore contact with his children after so long. Was he maybe becoming a bit more mellow in his old age?’ Although Marco already knew the answer to this one, he was clearly trying to see if Berg might have had an alternative reason for calling his children to join him, not just because of his last will and testament.

Ines shook her head decisively. ‘Very much the opposite. The older he got, the more difficult he became.’ She paused for thought while we sipped our scalding-hot, but very good, coffees. ‘Knowing him, I imagine it was probably about money. It normally was with him. Maybe he wanted to talk to them about his will.’

Marco nodded. ‘It could well be. By the way, can you give me the name of his lawyer and maybe his accountant?’

‘His lawyer, yes: Emiliano Vicentino. His studio is in Florence, in Via Ricasoli. He came here two or three times a year, and the two of them would lock themselves in the office and talk forhours. As for an accountant, Signor Berg didn’t have one. He did all that kind of thing himself. I imagine that was because he wouldn’t trust anybody else to handle his money.’

‘What about the family? How are you getting on with them?’

She shrugged. ‘Considering that I don’t speak Dutch, they don’t speak Italian, and my English is seriously limited, you can probably imagine. They seem pleasant enough and, understandably, they’ve been looking very puzzled. They’d only just arrived yesterday afternoon when the news of their father’s death came through and they were shocked. I was too, to be honest. He might have been old but he was tough. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d lived to be a hundred.’

‘Does it come as a surprise to you to know that he didn’t take his own life? We now have evidence that he was murdered.’

The housekeeper nodded a couple of times but didn’t look as surprised as we might have expected. ‘I couldn’t believe that he’d taken his own life. He seemed far too tough for that. I suppose it was a robbery, was it? I often wondered, considering that he used to carry such valuable items around with him, whether somebody would try to get their hands on them.’

‘We’re not sure at the moment. It happened inside his shop and there was considerable upheaval in there, so it’s difficult to know what might have been taken. It happened on Friday evening. Were you aware that Signor Berg hadn’t come home that night?’

‘No. He’d told me the day before that he was going out somewhere that evening and I didn’t have to prepare dinner for him. I came in a bit earlier than usual yesterday – around ten – as I had to prepare for the arrival of the family and there was no sign of him, so I just assumed he’d come home the night before and then gone off to work at seven-thirty as usual.’

‘What did the family members do after hearing the news?’

‘They haven’t really done very much since then, apart from sit in the lounge and talk. I thought they might go out and visit Florence yesterday evening, but only Luuc has been out. The others have just been hanging around here. Presumably, their father’s death has had its effect on them, even if he must have been a virtual stranger to them after so many years.’

Marco nodded a couple of times. ‘I couldn’t see any great signs of grief. What do you think, Signora Bianchi? Would you say that any one of them was particularly pleased or displeased at the news of the death?’

She shrugged. ‘The language barrier is what it is but, like you, I didn’t see any great sorrow on their faces – particularly not on the face of Luuc.’ She produced a cloth from her apron pocket and absently wiped a microscopic speck of dust from the tabletop. ‘But, like I say, after thirty years apart, who can blame them?’

We carried on asking questions, but it soon became clear that there wasn’t much more that Signora Bianchi could tell us. The old man had been secretive, uncommunicative and, by the sound of it, he had had next to no friends – and I was beginning to realise why. From what we’d been hearing, he hadn’t been an endearing character. Finally, we asked to be shown up to his study on the first floor where Signora Bianchi produced a serious-looking key from the pocket of her apron, unlocked the door, and left us to it. I had to lean on the door to open it and, from its considerable weight, it was clear that it was armoured, faced with timber. We walked in and I pressed it closed behind us, hearing a solid clunk from the lock as I did so. I couldn’t help noticing two hefty bolts on the inside so Berg could barricade himself inside if necessary. No doubt this room had been designed, not only as a study, but as a safe room.

The study was quite large, and there was another door at the far end – this time, a normal wooden one. Behind this, I found aserious steel safe the size of a fridge freezer. I tried turning the wheel on the front to open it but, as we’d been warned, this resisted all attempts. Above it, in the upper portion of the door, was a dial within a dial. I spun it a few times, hearing it click as it turned, but, without the combination, we had no chance of opening it. I went back into the study and headed for the huge mahogany desk with a swivel chair behind it. On the wall behind it was an oil painting that even I could see had been heavily influenced by Dutch landscape painters like Bruegel. It was a winter scene with people skating on an ice-covered canal and no doubt had reminded Berg of his youth in the Netherlands. It was a fine painting and I wondered idly if it might be valuable. Marco was sitting at the desk, searching through the drawers, so I flicked through the papers on the desktop. These were of little interest apart from a slim, beige file.

I took this to the window – which was criss-crossed with steel bars – and checked the contents in the sunlight. It quickly emerged that these were copies of the letters David Berg had sent to his children, inviting them to come to Florence, along with their replies. These were all in Dutch but I found them easy enough to decipher with the help of memories of German lessons at school many years earlier and an Italian-Dutch dictionary on a nearby shelf. The only item of particular interest was a simple piece of paper that looked as if it had been torn out of an exercise book. On it, there were letters in a list down the page, each one of them with a tick alongside it. These were C, L, E and EV.

It didn’t take much deduction to work out that these stood for the names of the three siblings: Casper, Luuc and Emma, but it took me a moment or two to recognise the identity of the fourth. Presumably, EV had to be Emiliano Vicentino, the lawyer. Assuming that he, too, had been invited to the house for the meeting on Saturday afternoon, it appeared that the old man hadintended to write – or more probably rewrite – his will there and then. This of course begged the question of whether the lawyer had answered the call to come here on Saturday afternoon as well. Nobody had mentioned him. I glanced across at Marco as he slid the last of the desk drawers shut and I held out the sheet of paper and the file towards him.

‘Seems like the old boy preferred old-fashioned mail rather than the electronic variety.’ I looked around the room. ‘Which reminds me: no computer. I imagine he must have had one, but it isn’t here. Maybe at the shop or even in the safe. Talking of the safe, how do you plan on opening it? Hopefully not dynamite.’

He smiled as he took the sheet with the initials on it from my hand. ‘I’ll let the tech people worry about that. If the worst comes to the worst, they’ll have to contact the makers.’ He pulled out his phone and glanced across at the formidable safe. ‘I’ve a feeling it may take some time to get into that beast. I’d better get onto them right away. We also need to check with Berg’s bank. You never know, there might be a piece of paper with the combination on it sitting in a safe deposit box.’ He shot me a quick grin. ‘Thecommissarioalways tells me I’m a hopeless optimist.’

I waited until he’d finished the call before making a suggestion. ‘It might be an idea to ask the housekeeper if the lawyer showed up here yesterday. The family downstairs didn’t mention him. And if he didn’t come, was that because Mr Berg had told him to come at a later date, or might it have been because the lawyer knew that his client had been murdered? Maybe he even committed the crime himself, although until we can get into the safe, it’s hard to come up with a motive.’

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