The Marshal Makes His Report (21 page)

‘According to your niece, by herself.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘As you say. I said, according to your niece.’

‘If you believe her you’re a fool. Buongianni was a big man. Heavy.’

‘Yes.’ The Marshal well remembered the weight of him in the dream. ‘You saw and heard nothing that night, then?’ It was his first attempt at turning the tables on her, asking her a question instead of the other way round. She seemed to have no objection.

‘Nothing. I take sleeping tablets. And if I had heard something, do you imagine I could have gone running up to the top of the tower? My condition is plain, I think. I never leave this apartment unless it is to go down in the lift to the reception rooms on the floor below.’

‘I understand. It’s fortunate that the dwarf, Grillo, who brought me your letter can act as legs for you.’

She looked at him a moment in silence, adjusting her opinion of him.

‘I see you’re more astute than one would think, Marshal. Yes, Grillo knows what goes on all over the house. That’s what you mean, isn’t it? He comes every day to tell me what sort of state Neri is in. As you can imagine, I can’t go up there to see him myself.’

‘But he could come down.’

‘He used to do that. Now he sees no one except the dwarf, Father Benigni—and now you.’

‘And his mother?’

‘He hasn’t spoken to her since that night. They say he won’t allow her in the tower. What the dwarf knows or doesn’t know I can’t say because he won’t tell me; what Neri knows is killing him. On that point the doctors have been clear. What I want to hear now is what you know. I’ve watched you walking around down there in the courtyard, day after day. You suspect something. If Neri sent for you, then he knows you suspect something too. The burden of what he knows is killing him. Take it from him.’

‘I would have thought the priest . . .’

‘You can only confess your own sins, Marshal.’

‘Yes. Yes, that’s what he said to me himself . . . So you think—his mother or—’

‘Yes, Marshal. You see I’m hiding nothing from you. Neri must survive at all costs. I brought my niece up from the age of twelve and I know her. By the time she was sixteen years old I was afraid of her. I want to save Neri, and if I said I intended to help you, the truth of the matter is that I want you to help me.’

‘If I can, of course.’

‘A Sicilian answer. Also, you know something or you wouldn’t be pursuing the matter on your own account. Well, there’s no reason why you should tell me. You’re the one investigating. Well?’

‘I’ll do what I can—’

‘Do what I can! I’m waiting for your questions. You know nothing about this family, I know everything. Well?’

In silence the Marshal took out his notebook. In silence she looked at it and at him with evident impatience. Nevertheless, he knew that she had straightened her back and was clutching hard at her stick ready for difficult or embarrassing questions, perhaps concerning Hugh Fido. He surprised her.

‘Tell me something, if you would, about this house.’

‘The house? You mean its history?’

‘No, no . . . Funnily enough, I’ve found out a bit about that in my wanderings about the courtyard.’ Observed by the whole family, as it turned out. Well, he’d felt it from the start and now he knew it was true. So be it. ‘No, the fact that there’s scaffolding outside but no work going on, though now they say the builders are back. Then this business of the tenants. The house being split up and let. All happen a bit suddenly, did it? Nobody seems to have been here more than a year.’

‘That’s correct. Just over a year. The reason you can work out for yourself.’

‘Shortage of money.’

‘Naturally.’

‘But a very sudden shortage?’

‘There’s no mystery about that, Marshal. It was Buon-gianni Corsi’s money which kept this house going. The restoration of a building such as this, you may or may not know, is obligatory. The State makes a contribution but also determines the extent and quality of the work. Buongianni, shall we say . . . withdrew his support.’

‘And why was that?’

‘There was a quarrel. Serious. I don’t know any details but I know that divorce was talked of. Out of the question, of course, but talked of. That was the end of Corsi money paying for the Ulderighi estate. According to Bianca, he felt the house must support itself.’

‘The reason for the quarrel couldn’t have been Hugh Fido?’ He was watching her face as he asked but it registered neither surprise nor annoyance.

‘Of course not. That began when the house was let and he moved in here.’

‘She could have known him before.’

It was obvious that she hadn’t thought of that.

‘That’s true . . . she’d be capable of it, too. Moving him in here once she had nothing more to lose since he knew. But no, Buongianni and he were on perfectly good terms. No, no.’

‘Then perhaps the quarrel was about his having someone else.’

She looked at him with a mixture of pity and amusement.

‘My dear Marshal, given their situation, I have no doubt whatever that Buongianni had someone, no doubt some person connected with his business and removed from our circle. That would hardly be relevant to the issue. Excuse me if I’ve offended you. It may be that in the army life is rather more monastic.’

And the priest forever in and out of the place! What people! Only Neri was different, unless . . . Who was to say Neri didn’t take after his father? He was a Corsi, wasn’t he? Yet the fact that this had only just occurred to the Marshal was an indication of how the unfortunate Buongianni Corsi had been sucked in to feed the Ulderighi clan.

‘Buongianni Corsi . . .’

‘Yes. What of him?’

‘I was wondering if you were fond of him.’

‘I was not. Whatever happened to him, he may for all I know have deserved it. I am interested in the health and future of Neri. Please keep that in mind. Visit him. Convince him that the burden he is carrying is rightly yours. Neri’s is, in some respects, a brilliant mind but he is in other ways . . . childlike. He sees you as a figure of authority. He trusts you.’ She leaned heavily on her stick and got to her feet, staring at the Marshal with her sick eyes. Evidently the interview was at an end and he was dismissed. He got to his feet, ready to offer her his hand, but she had turned from him and was making her way with heavy painful steps towards the door.

Before she reached it, when he was still standing looking after her, she paused and turned to say, ‘By the way, Marshal, we received, I should say my niece did, a parcel containing the shoes Buongianni was wearing when he died. They were returned here from the public prosecutor’s office along with a form of some description, officially releasing all Buongianni’s belongings and a note informing us that you would be the person to apply to for the rest of them. Is that correct?’

‘I—yes. Yes. I’ll bring them to you.’

‘I can see no necessity for it myself but if it’s a question of correct procedure, then of course, do bring them. Leave them with the porter.’

Nine

F
rom that moment until he read Catherine Yorke’s letter, the Marshal trod more carefully than he had ever done in his life, and he was by nature a careful man. He trod carefully, but always in the same direction, towards the Marchesa Bianca Maria Corsi Ulderighi Della Loggia. He never saw her, never spoke or attempted to speak to her, but she was his prey. He knew it by instinct though he didn’t know why. She frightened him, the house frightened him, the thought of whatever it was she had done frightened him. Only two things encouraged him, and the first of these was the fact that Fiorenza Ulderighi was as frightened of her niece as he was. The second was the removal of the shoes.

‘They’re your only evidence!’ protested Lorenzini.

‘I know,’ said the Marshal, satisfied. That was something he understood, about the only thing. He’d been baffled by foreigners, Florentine and English, and he’d had enough of it. At last something had happened which made sense to him. A vital piece of evidence had disappeared. He might have been in Palermo! The importance of those fingerprints was confirmed, the vanishing prints demonstrated fear. He was delighted. Lorenzini gave it all up as a bad job.

To the Captain, the Marshal’s commanding officer over at Headquarters on Borgo Ognissanti across the river, the Marshal, treading carefully, explained the real problem about the shoes.

‘I don’t know what she meant, you see. Of course, she may not have known—about the prints, I mean—so that her saying what she did, “If it’s a question of correct procedure” . . .’

‘Meant exactly that. Guarnaccia, you do have a tendency to read baroque intricacies into a straight line.’

The Marshal only stared, not understanding. Then he said, ‘I don’t want to be transferred. Teresa . . . The way the shoes were withdrawn from the lab—and, I imagine, nicely polished—the message through the Ulderighi—it’s a warning shot.’

‘Yes, I see your point there.’ The Captain didn’t say, ‘Of course you won’t be transferred, what rubbish.’

The Marshal sat with his hands planted on his knees, looking across the big desk at him hopefully, his stillness and his slightly bulging eyes giving the impression of a bulldog hoping for a titbit. His trust in the Captain in these matters was absolute. He was a Florentine, after all, and an officer too. The Captain, though unable to follow the workings of Guarnaccia’s mind, trusted him and always helped him.

They both believed that their mutual reliance was based on the solid facts of their shared work experience. Neither of them knew that it was really based on affection and deep need. The Captain, Guarnaccia always thought to himself, was clever, ambitious and adaptable. Guarnaccia, thought the edgy and overworked Captain, was fatherly, solid and unchanging. Their thoughts lay buried, unexpressed. They never sought each other out except for reasons of work.

Captain Maestrangelo was a good-looking man, or would have appeared so had he smiled. He never smiled.

‘I’ll put feelers out,’ he said. ‘If there’s any real threat to you it will be possible to find out. I don’t think there is, if that’s any comfort to you, because I’d probably have heard already.’

‘It might be a comfort to me and it might not,’ the Marshal said. ‘It depends on the reason.’

‘Yes.’ The Captain contemplated the bulky, motionless figure before him. ‘I doubt . . . with all due respect to your investigative powers, that they consider themselves in any real danger from you. I’m saying “they”, having no idea who “they” might be. Perhaps you have?’

‘Hmph.’

‘Guarnaccia . . . I want to help you but you’re not really allowing me to, are you?’

‘Yes and no. I don’t want to get transferred. I’d have come to you before but I didn’t want to involve you.’

‘I see. And now?’

‘I need two men.’

‘And I’m to give them to you without knowing exactly what you’re doing.’

‘I just thought it might be better, yes.’ The Marshal’s face remained expressionless.

‘All right. Two men.’

‘Night duty,’ the Marshal said. ‘If you should need an official reason, we’re coming up to the final of the football tournament. There’ll be some trouble. There always is. And Leo and Tiny will be in it.’ As far as the Marshal was concerned, that ought to have been the end of their conversation but the Captain was unable to restrain his curiosity and as Guarnaccia got to his feet, he, too, stood up and followed him to the door.

‘Wait . . . I just want to understand. You say this boy, the Ulderighi son—’

‘Neri.’

‘Neri. You say he actually saw his father kill himself.’

‘That’s right, he did.’

‘And you believe him.’

‘And I believe him.’

‘So you think he wasn’t dead, is that it?’

The Marshal stared at him. The Captain had brains, that’s what it was. He’d never have thought of that in a million years. Yet it was a solution and a simple one. Neri hadn’t touched his father. He’d seen him fire and slump over the edge of the crenellated tower. Then the mother had taken over, sent him down and presumably sent for Tiny and Leo. It was so simple, except . . .

‘Surely you can tell me that?’ insisted the Captain. ‘You must suspect something.’

‘Something . . . something that—I hadn’t thought of his not being dead. You may well be right about that, only, you see, he was hanging over the edge of the tower, a little push would have finished him.’

‘No, no, no. Think of the scandal. The gun room was much better.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘It all fits.’

‘Yes. I’d best be off. I’ll expect your men.’

And he was gone.

He trod carefully, he kept his head down, he was dutiful, humble, a little stupid apparently, watching his chance.

By night he watched with Lorenzini, both of them in plain clothes, both of them very uncomfortable, squashed inside the Marshal’s own little Fiat. They parked on the pavement of a side street barely wide enough for a car to pass them. From there they could see into the small piazza where Leo guarded the entrance to a disco club which had bulletproof steel doors and a second guard on the inside who, in quieter moments, opened up to poke out his head and chat with Leo.

Ten minutes’ walk away, another unmarked car in another side street watched the market square for the arrival of Tiny.

On Monday night nothing happened. When the Marshal and Lorenzini had discreetly followed Leo back to the Palazzo Ulderighi and Tiny was fully occupied humping meat at the market, the four watchers shrugged their shoulders and went wearily home to bed, three of them thinking privately that it was time wasted but not their business to say so.

On the second night, the Marshal was vindicated to the extent that blood was shed over the question of the football tournament.

There had already been a minor scuffle at the door during which Leo had shouldered a group of youngsters away with what looked like more than necessary violence, either because they weren’t members—the club was a private one—or because the place was full. They were hardly out of the way when a gang appeared with the clear intention of making a ruckus. They were all men and quite a few of them, even at that distance, were evidently a bit old for disco life. The minute he saw them Leo slapped his hand against the doors behind him. His mate came out and the doors closed.