Whilst the candles were still burning in the chapel and the living were imagining their futures beneath the images of saints, Bianca walked through the back corridor of the villa, as though she’d simply forgotten to fetch a basket of laundry.
She was no longer wearing the white apron.
That was perhaps the most striking change, and at the same time the most inconspicuous. Without her apron, she was no longer the housekeeper who brought bread, cleared plates, held lanterns and, with calm precision, ensured that no one asked who actually held all the keys. She was now wearing a dark tracksuit, sturdy shoes and a coat slung over her arm. Her grey hair was pinned up as sternly as before, but the sternness no longer had a subservient air about it. She looked military.
She paused briefly in the dining room.
The breakfast table was perfect.
Places set for Contini and the Cleary women. No trace of the others. No trace of the ‘Bombé surprisè’, no trace of the empty mocha cups in which one might find traces of a French sleeping potion. Bianca looked at the table and smiled.
It was not a warm smile.
“Order is that simple,” she said quietly. “You only set the table for those who are meant to feature in the story.”
Then she moved on.
In the corridor, she opened a low door concealed behind a tapestry. No guest would have noticed it. Perhaps not even Contini himself, who had played in this house as a child and yet never knew all the passages of a house that was cleaned by others. Otherwise he would have known that a laundry chute led from the sleeping gallery down to the ground floor, and that it was easy to let the drugged guests slide down it without dragging them over the jarring steps. Bianca knew them all: the passage to the larder, the second flight of stairs to the laundry room, the hatch behind the library, the narrow passage to the rock face, where old rubbish had once been carelessly thrown down as fish food.
The path was dark, but her hand found every edge. Three steps down, a narrow bend, then the cold breath of the rock. Wind came from outside, but muffled, as if it were passing through a long neck into the belly of the island. The house above her now lay far away. The chapel even further. The voices of the worshippers did not reach this passageway.
Down below, Bianca opened a second door.
Behind it lay the grotto.
The sea lapped slowly against the rock, black, heavy, patient. The small natural cavity was filled with the scent of salt, seaweed, old wood and oil. A narrow boat lay there, half in shadow, with two oars, a small electric outboard motor and a tarpaulin. Next to the boat lay a bundle, wrapped in dark canvas and weighted down with two pieces of iron.
Bianca stopped in front of it.
“You should have screamed less, Signorina Sebastienne, and above all, you shouldn’t have interfered with my plans on this island.”
The bundle did not reply.
Bianca knelt down, checked the knots and adjusted the canvas where a pale strip of skin had become visible. Her movements were not hasty. Nor were they cruel in a passionate sense. They were meticulous. That was worse.
‘You wanted to play with heiresses, with priests, banks, actors and those Australian women who were already damaged enough without you. You wanted to set Drogheda alight and warm the hands of the female workers in the flames to seduce them.
That was ambitious, but ambition without local knowledge is just senseless noise.”
She hoisted the bundle into the boat with surprising strength.
Valeria Sebastienne wasn’t heavy enough to cause Bianca any trouble, yet heavy enough to feel substantial in the water.
Bianca climbed in, untied the rope and pushed off from the rock face with an oar. The boat glided out of the grotto, slowly at first, then more confidently as the gentle current took hold of it. Above her lay the island with its villa, chapel and windows in which candlelight flickered. From above, no one could have seen the boat. Anyone looking towards the chapel saw only the wind. Anyone looking out to sea saw only darkness.
She rowed without haste.
Only once they were out where the rocks obscured the grotto did she start the engine. It revved quietly into a murmuring, low hum. Bianca kept the boat close to the shore, where the lynx watched her curiously, until she reached a spot where the water grew deeper and the current pulled outwards.
There she switched off the engine.
The sea became vast once more.
Bianca took hold of the bundle by the ropes and pulled it to the edge. For a moment, Valeria lay half over the side of the boat, a dark sack with human weight. Then she tipped over.
The water swallowed her without a cry.
The pieces of iron dragged her down. A circle formed, broke up, vanished. No hand, no hair, no item of clothing resurfaced. Just a small, dark movement beneath the surface, then nothing.
Bianca watched.
“Well,” she said. “Now you’re finally being consistent: the sea is a collective that cannot be privatised.”
She wiped her hands on a cloth, threw that into the water too, and sat down again. Then she took a small mobile phone from the inside pocket of her coat. It wasn’t new, but it was reliable, and it didn’t belong to the villa.
She waited until the connection was established.
“Drax,” said a man’s voice.
Bianca looked back at the island. The chapel stood bright against the darkness, a small, devout spot above a house that she had turned into a legend in the space of a few hours.
“Bianca here. The experiment with Sebastienne has failed. She was loud, greedy and less controllable than your people claimed. She did indeed reach the Cleary women, but she didn’t break them; on the contrary, they’ve bonded like old silver after a fire.”
At the other end, Hugo Drax was silent for a moment.
“And the files?”
“Useless for direct access. Carson is too vigilant, Cleary too practical, O’Neil too dangerously gifted, and Cleary-O’Neil too entrenched in their grief. Sebastienne might have caused a scandal, but not a tenable transfer of ownership. Her claims to Drogheda were legally worthless, as expected.”
“Then the operation was a waste of time.”
Bianca smiled.
“No. We know more now. Drogheda is not just an estate; it is a myth of silkworms and sheep, and myths cannot be shattered by an anarchist blackmailer. You have to redirect them. You don’t need a claim to the land if you can bring the government, technology and the future over to your side.”
Drax’s voice grew colder.
“The rare earths?”
Bianca looked out to sea.
“Where the preliminary surveys suggest they are. Drogheda has deposits that remain of interest to your missile programmes, and the Carson-Cleary family won’t give them up willingly.”
Drax laughed softly.
Bianca placed a hand on the engine.
“Sebastienne has been disposed of. Until tomorrow, the guests will be thinking of ghosts, houses, lynxes and divine warnings. The police won’t find a body. The house has been cleared. Breakfast is ready.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be gone before sunrise. I was never important enough to be remembered.”
This time she smiled more broadly.
“That’s always been my best quality.”
Drax fell silent again. Then he said, “Let me know when you reach Athens.”
“Of course.”
Bianca ended the call.
She started the engine again and drove further away from the island. Behind her lay the villa, immaculate, polite, full of people who believed they had, for a moment that night, tamed the chaos through ritual. Perhaps they really had. Bianca almost envied them. People needed moments like that, so as not to realise how easily they could be moved when someone knew their cups, their beds and their keys.
The wind picked up.
Up by the chapel, a door opened. A small group stepped out, too far away to make out their faces. In the flickering candlelight, Bianca could see only dark figures: women, men, people clinging to one another – or at least trying to.
Then the boat glided behind a rocky outcrop.
The chapel vanished.
The villa vanished.
Only the sea remained, and the sound of the engine, quiet enough not to sound like an escape.
Bianca headed east.
Beneath her, Valeria Sebastienne sank into the black depths, and somewhere beyond Australia, Drogheda lay in wait – red dust over rare earths, women above a mine, a myth about rocket metal.
Bianca did not laugh out loud. The night laughed for her.
