Page 33 of Murder in Verona

‘Your name is Ingrid Argento and you’re married to Alfredo Argento?’

In reply, she just gave the slightest hint of a nod and the inspector continued.

‘Please can you tell me how long you’ve been married?’

‘It will be ten years next month, but I fail to see why this is of any importance to you.’

Ventura ignored her comment. ‘Please can you describe your relationship with your brother-in-law, Rodolfo Argento?’

‘He was all right.’ Not exactly a gushing endorsement, but I had already got the message that getting information out of the beautiful Ingrid wasn’t going to be easy.

‘You got on well with him?’

‘Yes, on the rare occasions when I saw him.’

‘When you say “rare”, are we talking once a week, once a month or less often?’

‘Once or twice a year.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Even though you were living barely ten kilometres from each other?’ She gave no reply so he carried on. ‘And what about his wife? Did you get on well with her?’

Her already sour expression became positively acid. ‘I’ve always done my best to avoid meeting her, so I have no relationship with her to speak of. Now that Rodolfo has died and thefuneral’s out of the way, I fully intend never to see her or speak to her again.’

‘Can you tell me why you don’t like her?’

There was a brief pause before she answered. ‘She was completely unsuited for him, and I’m sure that she was responsible for him deciding to take his own life.’

‘Unsuited how?’

‘She only married him for his money. That was clear to everybody. She was using him, that’s all.’

I caught the inspector’s eye and decided to take a chance. ‘So, from your point of view, it would have been better ifshe’dbeen killed rather than her husband?’

Ingrid turned her head towards me and I could almost feel the antagonism in her stare. ‘It would have been better if nobody had been killed, don’t you think?’ Her tone was thick with irony, but maybe I had caught a flash of something – surely not guilt?

The inspector took over the questioning again. ‘I’m afraid I have to inform you that it’s very likely that your brother-in-law didn’t take his own life, nor that he was involved in an accident, but that he was deliberately murdered.’

Now it was his turn to be subjected to a withering stare. ‘My husband told me last night that you believed that nonsense – and that’s what it is. I have absolutely no doubt that Rodolfo killed himself to get away from that awful woman.’ For a moment, I thought I saw a spark of animation in her eyes. ‘Have you any proof to justify your ridiculous supposition?’

Ventura shook his head and a gleam of triumph appeared on Ingrid’s face. ‘Why are you wasting your time, Inspector, and, more importantly, why are you wasting mine?’

He ignored the question. ‘Please can you confirm your movements on the day of his death? I’m asking everybody this.’

‘What day was it? You’ll have to remind me.’

She was doing her best to sound blasé and uninterested but I, at least, wasn’t buying it. Given that she knew full well that there was a criminal investigation taking place, it was scarcely credible that she wouldn’t have that date engraved in her memory.The lady doth protest too much, methinks…?

The inspector humoured her. ‘Tuesday the twelfth of July.’

Ingrid made a show of looking for her phone and then scrolling through it before giving us her answer. ‘At ten o’clock in the morning, I had my yoga class, at twelve, I met up with Alfredo for lunch at the golf club, and in the afternoon, I had intended going to meet friends in town but by that time, the news of the accident had come through and Alfredo and I went up to the villa to see if we could be of help.’

‘And could you?’

She shook her head angrily. ‘Of course not. Rodolfo was dead and that was that. It was a waste of time, but Alfredo insisted we should be there.’ There certainly wasn’t much of the milk of human kindness about this woman and I noted that Oscar didn’t even try to go near her.

‘Did you speak to his wife or his mother?’

‘No, Rosina handled all that sort of thing.’

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