The Villa(61)
“You’re really not leaving,” he says, and Mari folds her arms tight across her chest.
“I’m not. You can, but I won’t.”
Sitting heavily on the side of the bed, Pierce puts his head in his hands, sucking in a breath. When he finally looks back at her, there are tears in his eyes, but he’s trying to smile.
“Then I’ll stay, too,” Pierce proclaims, and somewhere in the universe, a pair of scissors snaps, sealing his fate.
In the end, it was the testimony of Elena Bianchi that doomed John Dorchester. The teenager had been a maid at Villa Rosato for the entire summer and, it turned out, had witnessed far more of the various tensions and dramas that were unfolding between the inhabitants than they realized. On the stand for a total of three days altogether, Elena’s testimony held the court—and the world—riveted. Thanks to her, it was revealed that not only had Noel Gordon impregnated Lara Larchmont, but that Lara had previously had a brief affair with the deceased, Pierce Sheldon. Elena also testified to drunken rages, petty arguments, and, most damning of all, a physical altercation between Johnnie and Pierce that had erupted after Elena saw Johnnie and Mari in a passionate embrace.
This, of course, led to the long-standing belief that everything that happened that summer was really all about sex. The rumors began at the trial, and really never stopped. Mari was having an affair with Johnnie; no, she was actually sleeping with Noel and Johnnie—or, even more scandalous, had Mari discovered that Pierce and Noel were sleeping together?
Perhaps, as Elena darkly implied before the opposing counsel could stop her, it was a more fluid situation, one involving bed swapping, partner swapping—a veritable orgy unfolding just outside the tranquil medieval hill town of Orvieto.
It was ironic that these five people, accustomed to being watched and scrutinized, seemed to have forgotten about the civilian in their midst, who was committing to memory all the private moments that eventually led to a brutal murder.
Elena enjoyed her brief moment of celebrity as well. She was able to parlay it into a brief modeling career and eventually married Giancarlo Ricci, the wealthy son of an Italian record executive before she sadly passed away in the mid-eighties.
It’s a great irony, no doubt, that in being a part of something so horrible, Elena Bianchi’s life was, indisputably, improved.
If she herself ever had any qualms about that, she never expressed them. If anything, she seemed to take the events of July 29, 1974, in her stride.
Interviewed a year after the trial, Elena was asked if she thought the courts got it right. Her answer was typically Italian: Errano tutti pazzi.
“They are all mad.”
—The Rock Star, the Writer, and the Murdered Musician: The Strange Saga of Villa Rosato, A. Burton, longformcrime.net
MARI, 1974—ORVIETO
Mari doesn’t know it’s her last night at Villa Rosato on the July evening that she sits down at her desk to finish Lilith Rising. There’s no warning, no sense of foreboding in the air.
That last day has actually been one of the nicer ones that she’s spent at the villa. Noel has taken himself off to town, claiming he’s going to throw himself down St. Patrick’s Well. Given that he abandoned any pretense of disguise, Mari suspects he intends to put himself on display and be admired by the locals. Pierce spends most of the day writing in the drawing room downstairs. Lara is in her room, playing, and though Johnnie seems determined to get himself into the most altered state humanly possible, he’s at least peaceful, for once. No more dark glares at Pierce, no further arguments.
It’s a good day, all in all, and Mari will be glad for that, after.
It’s past midnight when the storm begins, and Mari is still at her desk, a candle burning next to her. She hears voices in the hallway, but she ignores them at first, determined to see her story through until the bloody end.
Victoria stared up at the house, and knew. All this time, she had thought it was Colin drawing her to the darkness, but the darkness had always been there, inside her. It’s why she loved the house, and the house loved her. It’s why she was here now: to bring about her own ruin, but also her own salvation.
She stepped forward, the grass—
“I get a say in this!”
Pierce’s shout rings out from somewhere downstairs, startling Mari, ripping her out of the world she’s creating and thrusting her right back into the one she lives in.
If he and Johnnie have started up again …
But it’s not Johnnie’s voice that replies.
“Pierce, you’re drunk,” Mari hears her stepsister say, her voice weary, and Mari goes still, waiting.
“You aren’t listening to me,” Pierce goes on. “You don’t understand that we could … we could all be happy, Lara. We were happy, right? Before we lost Billy.”
The mention of her son’s name has Mari rising from her desk, and when she walks halfway down the stairs, she sees Pierce and Lara are standing in the front hallway near the door. Lara was playing earlier, and her guitar is still loosely held by the neck in one hand, resting against her leg.
“Stop it,” Lara says to Pierce, “and go to bed. We can talk about this in the morning.”
Lara tries to move past him as a clap of thunder rattles the house, but Pierce grabs her shoulders, stopping her. The guitar falls to the floor with a surprisingly loud thwack, and Lara’s eyes go to it, but she doesn’t try to extricate herself from Pierce’s grip.