Free The Last Enemy by Grace Brophy Page B

room with her doctor present.” He checked his wrist-watch. “I would like to meet with the household in thirty minutes— in this room, or in another if you prefer. And now, with your permission, I would like to speak to officers Staccioli and Ottaviani.”
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    PIERO HAD BEEN disappointed when the count had acceded so easily to Cenni’s demand to interview the family with a simple certo. He had been hoping for some entertainment to cheer him up after Sergeant Antolini’s brush-off. It would have been an interesting battle. Cenni was well known for his skill in handling the rich and famous, the principal reason the questore assigned him to so many high profile police investigations. But Piero had been working with Cenni now for more than four years and knew that every now and then he got his back up. As Elena would say when that happened, using an expression she had heard in one of those women’s flicks she was always watching, Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night . Very bumpy, Piero thought, as they followed the count below stairs to the kitchen.
    The kitchen was the kind of room Piero liked. He loved to eat and the Casati kitchen was just the place in which to do it. It was located immediately below the family room but was at least twice its size. When the house was originally built, it had probably served as both kitchen and storerooms for root vegetables, barrels of wine, flour, salt, and other provisions the family would have needed to get through the cold Umbrian winters. The ceilings were at least fifteen feet high, and supported by massive oak beams blackened with the smoke of centuries. A large alcove on the east wall, carved out of stone, was now used to cure meats and age cheeses. It was also lined with wine and port barrels, although he doubted that a count would drink wine from a barrel. Probably for the servants, he thought. He counted four large oak presses, similar to the one that his nonna had in her kitchen when he was growing up. She’d kept biscotti in a jar on the top shelf. He remembered climbing up to the top by pulling out the bottom drawers and using them as steps. He still had a scar on his elbow from one of his falls. He had no regrets, though. That day she had let him finish the whole jar.
    There was a huge fireplace on the west wall, large enough for a grown man to enter without stooping. It reminded him of a fireplace he’d once seen in Toledo the year that he and his mother had visited Spain. It had stone benches inside, covered on top with tiles. The guide had told them that the family would sit inside the fireplace in the winter to stay warm. At some point the Casati family had installed a modern gas stove, stainless steel sink, and large refrigerator in the back of the kitchen, but the original stone sink and wood-burning stove were still the centerpieces of the cooking area. In the center of the room stood a large refectory table, at least twelve feet long. One side held baskets of fresh vegetables, two large loaves of bread—just out of the oven he surmised from the warm smell of yeast that filled the air—and what looked to be the beginnings of a torta di pasqua. At the other side were four police officers, all comfortably ensconced drinking coffee and eating biscotti. Fasten your seatbelts , Piero said to himself when he spied Elena among them.
    The commissario was close to the boiling point. From what he had observed since entering the house, it appeared that nothing had been done to secure it or Rita Minelli’s living quarters. If Staccioli was not able to produce the only existing key to Rita Minelli’s room, it meant that any member of the family or their servants had had plenty of time to search her room and remove anything that might embarrass or incriminate them, he reflected. He acknowledged to himself that the murderer, if actually living in the Casati house, would have had ample opportunity the previous night to search Minelli’s room before the