Free The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian

her, curious, her tone softened. “We should change out of our bathing suits. Your grandfather wants to leave for Arezzo by noon. You’re going to see your uncle Vittore.”
    Cristina smiled at the child. Then, overhead, she heard engines. In a moment they all did, even Massimo as he slapped frantically at the water with the palms of his hands. Almost as one they glanced up at the cirriform sky: another flock of German planes was motoring its way to the south.

1955

    LATE WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, Paolo Ficino sat across from this aging marchesa from a village southeast of Siena in which he had not set foot once in the forty-eight years he had been on the planet, and tried to empathize with what she was experiencing. There was the grief that her son’s wife was dead—not merely murdered, but eviscerated—and now there was the indignity of having to sit across from a homicide inspector in the police headquarters in Florence. She told him she was sixty-four years old, and certainly she had earned the deep lines around her eyes and her mouth. She had outlived her husband, one of her two sons, and a pair of grandchildren. And now Francesca. But Beatrice Rosati was still beautiful: courtly and elegant and serene. Her daughter, Cristina, was sitting beside her, and he could see the resemblance in the shape of their eyes and the austere chiseling that marked their cheeks.
    “Are you sure you would not like some coffee?” he asked the two women now.
    “No, I’m fine,” Beatrice said, her hands folded demurely on the small red leather purse in her lap. “It’s too late in the day for me to have coffee.” She was dressed for mourning in a black skirt and blouse and a modest string of pearls. Her daughter was in a rather cheerful sleeveless summer dress; it was white with lavender flowers.
    “If you change your mind …”
    “Thank you.”
    “Serafina will be joining us. She is the detective who interviewed Cristina yesterday,” he said, directing his remark to the marchesa. “She’s on the phone with America.”
    The older woman nodded but remained quiet.
    “So,” Paolo began, “any idea of who did not particularly like your daughter-in-law?”
    “I’m sure there were lots of people,” Beatrice said. “My daughter-in-law had an acerbic tongue and she did not suffer fools or foolishness.”
    “Okay. Can you give me some names?”
    “I could, but it would include almost everyone she ever met.”
    He thought about this. “Did you not like her?”
    “No, I loved her. It’s just …”
    Cristina patted her mother on the knee and jumped in. “It’s just that Francesca was always a little difficult. Opinionated. After my brother was killed and the children died, it got much worse. I think that’s understandable. She was always angry and always judging. Everyone. Everything. Before, it had just been a dark sense of humor. But after the war? She was a different person. My mother hadn’t seen her in years.”
    “How many years?”
    “Four and one half,” Beatrice answered. “I last saw Francesca over Christmas 1950.”
    “But you continued to see her,” Paolo said to Cristina.
    “Yes. When I came to Florence, sometimes we would have lunch or dinner. We’d get manicures and pedicures together—the way we did when I was a teenager and she was a young mother.”
    “Were you planning on visiting a salon this time? Did you have other business in Florence?”
    “No, I didn’t. We didn’t. I was just coming to visit Francesca.”
    He reached into a folder, pulled out the photograph of Mario Spagnoli, and placed it at the edge of his desk so both women could see it. “This is the person Francesca had dinner with Monday night, a few hours before she was killed. He read about her death in the newspaper and immediately came forward.”
    “So this is the man who might have murdered her?” Beatrice asked, gazing almost in wonderment at the image.
    “Maybe, but I don’t think so. He’s a lawyer, forty-four