Chapter 4: The Bell Tower

Agnese Castellani did not scream.

She pulled me into the sacristy, shut the door, and stood with her back against it.

Up close she smelled of lilies and cold stone.

"Where did you sleep last night?" she asked.

"I won't tell you."

"Good. Then I will not know."

I held the phone against my ribs and waited for her to call her son.

She looked at my face for a long time.

"I watched Ilaria play that film for three hundred people," she said. "I have been to many funerals, Viola. I have never seen one so badly acted."

"Your son locked me in a cage."

"I did not ask you what he did."

"Then what are you asking?"

Her mouth tightened.

"Two years ago my elder boy dove off this headland and never came up. I buried an empty box."

"I did not cry at that funeral either."

She said it flatly, and it was not an excuse.

I had no idea what to do with it.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because the sea has now kept two people on this coast who knew how to swim."

She opened the door behind her an inch and listened.

"The back stairs go up the bell tower. The tower window looks out over the sea wall, and the water under it is deep."

"I can't help you, and I will not stop you."

"Go now."

"Why?"

"Because Ilaria has just told my son that a waitress looked at her too long."

Downstairs, a man shouted.

I ran.

The stairs behind the sacristy were narrow and stone, and they wound up and up with only a rope for a rail.

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