Italian Fever by Valerie Martin

her guilty hand to ease the humiliation of the righteous judgment against her.
    DV’ S FUNERAL WAS a simple business, performed without benefit of clergy and attended by mourners who were, for the most part, only distantly acquainted with the deceased.
    The mourners had all gathered at the piazza in Ugolino and, after the necessary introductions, had walked together out to the cemetery, where the coffin was already in place, balanced on a lattice of thin boards and a net of ropes over a deep, dark hole. Lucy was impressed by the number of locals who had turned out, dressed appropriately in black, to accompany the American writer to his grave. All three of the Panatellaswere there, as well as the entire Cini family (The aristocrats, Lucy thought; DV would have appreciated that): the grandmother, a tiny white-haired, sharp-nosed, black-eyed lady brandishing a carved walking stick; her son, whom Lucy guessed to be seventy, though a very hale and sturdy seventy, unencumbered by feebleness or fat, and with a great shock of white hair that must have been a daily trial to the third Cini family member; his son, the heir, a gentleman in his forties, nattily dressed but seedy in spite of it. He wore his graying hair slicked back, which made it look darker, but it started farther from his temples than his father’s did and he had clearly combed it with close attention to the necessity for coverage at the crown.
    Paolo Braggio, DV’s editor from Milan, who had greeted Massimo with an enthusiastic hug and pumped Lucy’s hand gleefully, as if he had been waiting to meet her for many years, though she was certain he had no idea who she was or why she was there, was easily distracted from actually finding out anything about her by the arrival of Stanton Cutler, who really did seem to know him. Signor Braggio was a short, dense, fierce personage with fiery eyes and sudden manners, and as Lucy watched him embracing Cutler’s elegant waist, she thought the two looked as if they had been created to demonstrate the full range of human variety. Stanton Cutler’s languid gaze fluttered over the gathering as he divested himself of his fellow editor, settling on Lucy with a bemused shrug. What was to be done about Italians? his expression seemed to say. One had simply to endure them.
    They set out, walking in pairs. Lucy fell in naturally with her fellow countryman. “This is awfully sad,” he said. “And so sudden.”
    “I’m relieved you’ve come,” she replied. “I’m afraid thearrangements are a bit slapdash. It seemed important not to let him lie around in somebody’s refrigerator here.”
    “Perfectly right,” Stanton agreed. “You can take your time clearing things up once he’s buried. You’ve done an excellent job. It can’t have been easy.”
    “Actually, Massimo did it,” she said. “I just signed things so he could get the money wired to pay for it.”
    “And you’ll stay on a bit, at the villa?”
    Lucy smiled ruefully. “It’s not a villa. It’s a farmhouse.”
    “Um.” Stanton looked ahead at the party of Italians toiling up the hill ahead of them, for they had fallen behind. “Look at that amazing old woman,” he said. “She must be a hundred, and she has outstripped everyone.”
    “There is a villa,” Lucy continued. “It’s hers, actually. DV wasn’t in it.”
    Stanton gave her a sympathetic smile. He had been DV’s editor for nearly twenty years and understood better than anyone the essentially cavalier nature of his author’s relationship with reality. “Have you had any time to look through his papers?”
    “Only a little,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be much.”
    Stanton’s blue eyes opened wide. “But you did find the last half of the manuscript?”
    “No,” she said. “Was he finished with it?”
    “Well, I’m assuming he was. It was due in a week or so. DV was never late with a manuscript. He always needed the money.”
    “That’s true,” Lucy agreed. “But I