He nodded. ‘It seems the sensible thing to do,’ he murmured.
‘But, excitingly,’ Doris continued, ‘there’s talk of Cinecittà being revived in the north! Freddi is working on it, isn’t he Alessandro?’
‘Give him time, my dear,’ said Pavolini. ‘There is much to be done first.’
After dinner, the band struck up, playing a medley of classical German waltzes. Wolff invited Isabella to dance and, although reluctant, she realised she couldn’t refuse him in front of Doris and the other guests. Isabella had to admit he was a good dancer, firm and decisive, but he held her too close and his hand strayed a little too much from her waist as he guided her around the floor. She yearned to be released.
Finally, at midnight, she made her excuses. ‘I’m sorry, I have the most terrible headache and really must go.’
‘So soon?’ Wolff was clearly disappointed. ‘I insist that my driver takes you home, and tomorrow we will visit the Cranach exhibition at Villa Borghese. Those are the only terms on which I will allow you to leave.’
‘Then I accept,’ she said weakly.
‘Tomorrow at the Villa Borghese then? One o’clock… will that suit?’
Isabella arrived at the gallery a little early. She was wearing a pale-grey linen suit. It was flattering without being provocative.
In the entrance hall, she was surprised to see someone she recognised sitting on a bench. It was a good friend of hers, Gianni Cini. He had his head in his hands and appeared to be weeping.
‘Gianni!’ she said, sitting down next to him. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Oh Isabella, it’s you. Such terrible, terrible news.’
‘Tell me,’ she said gently. ‘What’s happened?’
‘My father, Vittorio, he’s been sent to Dachau.’
Isabella put her arm around her friend’s shoulders. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘What is Dachau?’
‘It’s a camp… a terrible prison camp in Germany.’
‘That’s awful, but why?’ she asked. ‘What has he done?’
‘No one will tell us,’ wailed Gianni.
‘But wasn’t he one of Mussolini’s ministers?’
‘Yes, the Minister of Communications, but Mussolini always hated him. Now that Il Duce has been re-established by the Germans in the north, they’ve decided to get rid of him.’ He began to sob. ‘He’ll never survive a place like that, he’s an old man, Isabella.’
Isabella remembered her conversation the previous evening with Doris about Count Ciano’s arrest. So, now two of Mussolini’s ex-ministers were potentially at risk of death.
‘Let me see what I can do,’ she said soothingly.
‘How could you possibly help?’ asked Gianni, looking up at her with surprise.
‘I’m not sure exactly, but I know someone who might have some influence.’
After Gianni had left, Isabella waited nervously in the lobby for Karl Wolff. She would charm him, she decided, and persuade him to save her friend’s father. He swept in on the dot of one o’clock, walking briskly over to her. He clicked his heels, bowed his head and kissed her hand. His lips lingered slightly before he straightened up.
‘How lovely you look,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ she replied politely. ‘Shall we go in? I’m looking forward to seeing the exhibition through the eyes of such an expert.’
They spent the next hour exploring the gallery’s ground-floor rooms, before Wolff suggested they move upstairs.
‘The Cranachs are on display up there and I’m anxious to show them to you.’
They climbed the grand staircase to the upstairs galleries, their footsteps echoing on the wooden floors. They stopped in front of Cranach’s painting of the Crucifixion.
‘Ah,’ said Wolff, ‘this is Cranach’s “Centurion at the Cross”. A starkly realistic representation of Christ’s final moments.’
‘One can’t fail to be moved by it,’ said Isabella appreciatively.
‘It’s always useful, I think, to be reminded of our Lord’s suffering,’ Wolff continued. ‘Have you seen Cranach’s “The Arrest of Christ”? It’s not here sadly, but in a gallery in Austria.’
She shook her head.
‘It’s a wonderful work, a profound representation of betrayal, of course.’
‘Judas’s betrayal, you mean?’
The word betrayal hung in the air. She sensed he was waiting for her to ask about Livia, but her guilt made her too frightened to bring it up.
‘We tracked down that girl by the way,’ he said suddenly. ‘The girl you told us about in Florence.’
‘Really?’ Isabella replied, her heart racing.
‘She denied everything of course, as you’d expect.’ He glanced down at Isabella and took her arm. ‘Shall we take a look at the “Venus”?’ He steered her towards a painting of a slender naked woman gazing down at Cupid. ‘The child,’ began Wolff, ‘is holding a honeycomb, while being stung by bees, do you see? The painting is an allegory on the