The Woman at the Window by Emyr Humphreys Page A

stomach. In the end she signed up for Vennenberg’s new glamorous course in computerised archaeology and, as the phrase goes, the rest is history.’
    â€˜What did she see in him do you think?’
    Griffiths seemed anxious to know. It couldn’t be put down to nothing more than natural selection and perpetuating the species. It was something between a whim and an illusion and yet it was a vital element in human existence that had to be taken into account.
    â€˜What does anybody see in anybody? Maybe she wanted a more acceptable father? A large nordic figure, soft inside, anxious to please, yearning to be mothered. That’s how it goes, Griff. Emotional supply and demand. We can ponder too long over these little things. He was a bit like a large dog, eager to be petted. And she was keen on dogs. And of course there was that distemper of late middle age. The longing to remain youthful.’
    Griffiths palpated his expanding stomach with the tips of his fingers.
    â€˜I used to worry about that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘I haven’t for ages.’
    Marloff still played tennis. Griffiths in no way held this against him. He was content with his own untidiness. He liked to assume it gave him more time to devote to his researches into the nature of truth.
    â€˜The twists and turns,’ Marloff said. ‘There really is no end to it. Quite unexpectedly Vennenberg came into a heap of money.’
    â€˜Before or after?’
    Griffiths insisted on the proper order of events. Quite apart from establishing hard fact, any gratuitous acquisition of wealth threatened to transform a homily into a fairy tale. Homilies were much more to his taste.
    â€˜That I don’t know.’
    Somehow the small gap in his knowledge only added to the extent of Marloff ’s omniscience.
    â€˜What I do know is that Vennenberg had a brother who was a brilliant biochemist. They didn’t get on and didn’t have much to do with each other. But the brother died of pancreatic cancer and all the patents and royalties and so forth fell into Vennenberg’s lap. To cut a long story short he promptly resigned and came down here and bought these properties that included the ruined castle of Capestri, and he and his beloved Annette set about restoring it together.’
    â€˜Would you call it a castle? More like an overblown farmhouse.’
    â€˜Marked on the old maps as Castello. He showed it to me. It must have been the year you and Myfanwy didn’t come down here. He found books about it. And manuscripts. In some old episcopal library. Excited as a schoolboy. Resolved to write a history of the whole estate. He became absorbed in the enterprise. Medieval archaeology all around him. And an intriguing strata of local superstition. It was haunted. There was a ghost! That’s how they got it cheap. A charming ruin in an isolated position with a spectacular view and a romantic couple with pots of money to put into its restoration. They both loved it.’
    â€˜Wouldn’t suit us though, would it?’
    â€˜No. But we’ve got to admire it. It will help things along.’ ‘What ghost anyway?’
    He was sceptical but still interested. As Myfanwy said when you find a place you’ve got to know about it. Settle in like good neighbours. ‘We don’t want to degenerate do we into ex-pats hanging about just for the sun and the booze,’ she said. Griffiths had great respect for his wife’s good taste.
    â€˜An unfaithful Orsini wife tossed over the cliff returns to haunt the place.’
    â€˜Hum. We make our own ghosts. Anway, I want some- where where I can relapse completely into the condition of growing older. Where things won’t go bump in the night.’
    â€˜Wait till you see it,’ Marloff said. ‘ The photographs don’t do it justice. No view of the track through the vineyard. There’s work to be done of course. There always is. I think the