San Quirico D'Orcia, Tuscany San Quirico D'Orcia nestles in a stunning valley east of Montalcino, a third of the way along the breathtakingly beautiful route most tourists take to Montepulciano. A kilometre in the opposite direction, on the rising, winding road from San Quirico to Pienza, is the dramatic cypress-lined hillside that Ridley Scott used for the poignant scenes of the wife and child waiting for the return of Maximus in the film Gladiator.
The town's historic walls are broken and have lost much of their beauty. Behind them though stand buildings made of a glorious golden stone, reminding Nancy of the rough chunks of sweet honeycomb that she craved when she was a kid.
La Casa Strada lies on the very edge of the town walls and was once an olive oil business. That was until the mid-seventies, when a blisteringly hot summer brought the locusts of bankruptcy to many farms in the valleys of Tuscany. The owners, Laura and Sylvio Martinelli, gave up and moved in with family in Cortona. Sixty-year-old Sylvio got a job driving taxis, while sixty-five-year-old Laura turned her hand to baking Torta della Nonna for a local shop. Since then, their former home and work buildings had been modernized and extended beyond recognition; only the magnificent view over the rolling hills of Val D'Orcia remained unaltered and unalterable.
Nancy was winding herself slowly into her working day. She'd dropped Zack at a friend's house for a play day and was about to go through her planning routines for the week and coming month. She was relieved that the three-year-old had finally settled into his daily routine. A year earlier she used to endure terrible scenes at the International nursery in Pienza with him refusing to be left. Zack would cry and scream, clutching on to her shoulders or dress to prevent her putting him down. Worst of all, when she walked outside, she would see his tear-streaked face pressed against the window, begging her not to leave him. Nowadays though, Zack was 'a big boy', a 'good boy', and he understood that mommy and daddy needed to work during the day.
Nancy stuck her head through the kitchen door where the chefs were finishing the last of the breakfasts and shouted 'Good morning, everyone!', then waited for the replying chorus of 'Buon giorno' before letting the door flap shut again.
She noticed that their local handyman, Guido, was in there fixing a troublesome ventilator hood that served Paolo's gas-fired eight-burner oven. For some time, their temperamental chef had been pressing Nancy for a new range, like the one his second cousin in Rome had. But Paolo would have to wait, cash was tight at the moment and she'd told him that until the summer's takings were in, he'd have to make do with the 'bargains' they might pick up from local catering auctions. Nancy smiled to herself. In truth, Guido had now fixed so many of the appliances that neither she nor Jack could really regard them as bargains any more.
There were other things that needed fixing too. Months back, part of the far end of the garden terrace had dramatically slipped away and created a sharp fall on to the next terrace and an intriguing hole in the hillside. Carlo reckoned there could be an old water well in there, while Paolo conjured up more exotic possibilities by pointing out that the area used to be a fortified Medici stronghold. Whatever it was, it was an eyesore, a nuisance and maybe even a danger. Any day soon, one of Carlo's friends was coming to do what he promised would be an inexpensive job of landscaping over it.
'Morning, Maria,' said Nancy, as their twenty-year-old receptionist finally arrived at her desk.
'Good morning, Mrs King,' said Maria Fazing. Her grumpy American owner had banned her from using her native Italian. Nancy insisted that as foreign tourists were their main target customers, she should always begin conversations in English. Maria put up with it because one day she would enter Miss Italia, then Miss World, and would eventually be grateful to have been forced to learn English. Or at least that's what she told herself.
Nancy checked the computer, then the answer-phone, and updated the list of room bookings. She also added four more people to that evening's dinner reservations and then checked their own website for e-mail enquiries. There were some requests for menus, a couple of letters in Italian that Nancy printed off for Maria to reply to, and someone wanting a quote for a fifth-wedding-anniversary dinner.
Maria was on the phone to some potential guests so Nancy had to wait to hand over the e-mail print-offs. She glanced down at a copy of La Nazione. The front-page headline screamed 'Omicidio!' and carried a photo of a pretty dark-haired young woman called Cristina Barbuggiani. Nancy had also seen the girl's picture on TV bulletins and had heard staff talking about how her body had been chopped up and thrown in the sea. She turned away, letting out a long sigh, sad to realize that even here, in the most beautiful place she had ever lived, there was no escape from murder.