The Marshal Makes His Report (27 page)

She saw the Marshal. She looked him straight in the eyes. She didn’t see the shrouded stretcher appear behind the ambulance. Then the dwarf began to scream, brief staccato screams not of fear but of rage. The Marshal ran to the entrance of the tower, knowing what the dwarf’s rage meant. The Marchesa and all the extraneous people in the courtyard gazed after him. He pounded up the stone stairs, round and up, up and round, never pausing for breath, his heart fit to burst and yet he knew that he would be too late and the hand that reached and grasped at the rope was sweating and sliding.

He overtook the dwarf quite near the top. He was still hauling himself up by the force of his arms and chest. His tiny legs had almost given out completely and he no longer had the breath to scream rage at his impotence. Tears were mixed with sweat on his streaked face and breathless incomprehensible curses issued from him. When the Marshal had got past him he slumped down on to the stairs, still clinging to the rope.

The turret was empty. The Marshal stopped, holding his chest and closing his eyes at the searing pain in his lungs. Above him the turquoise sky was deepening to midnight blue and the first star shone peacefully. It never occurred to the Marshal that Neri would have made an attempt at last to leave the Palazzo Ulderighi as his father had seemed to do. He knew before his slow steps reached the wall, before his big hands touched the warm stones of the parapet, that Neri would be a huddled heap by the well at his mother’s feet. Slowly, he leaned over to look down on the death he had failed to prevent. Slowly, the first firework drew its soft glittering design across the sky in honour of San Giovanni, the patron saint of Florence. On the night of June 24th.

The cadaver presented injuries to the head and the right
hand. (See enc. 2)

The right hand had been broken. Probably from hitting the well, but the Marchesa ignored this as she had ignored the crushed head. She had been distressed by the superficial grazes on the hand and had called repeatedly above the noise of the fireworks for water and bandages. When the ambulance men tried to get near with a stretcher she became angry.

‘Can’t you see he’s sleeping? He always did sleep face down . . . I used to worry so much but the doctors . . . Why isn’t there water? Bring me a bandage. For God’s sake, can’t anyone see that he’s hurt his hand!’

In the end they had been forced to bandage the dead hand. Then she allowed herself to be led away by the chief public prosecutor. ‘I told you,’ she said, ‘that in time he’d come back to me.’ She was smiling, her face intermittently lit by the blue, red and green explosions above her.

The Marshal never saw her again. She was to die many years later in a clinic in Switzerland. She never regained her reason and nothing ever again disturbed her absolute serenity.

The cadaver was removed on the authorization of the substitute
prosecutor Dr Mauro Maurri at 22.25 and transported by
an ambulance of the Misericordia to the Medico-Legal Institute
to be detained at the disposition of the competent authorities.

This morning’s interview with the chief public prosecutor and substitute prosecutor Maurri had been brief. They had come full circle and arrived at yet another HSA report.

Nevertheless, their attitude to the Marshal this time was very different. All of them knew that, even should she regain her reason, which was unlikely, Bianca Maria Corsi Ulderighi Della Loggia would never be prosecuted. The Marshal knew everything and could do nothing. The expert lawyers of Tiny and Leo would have their way with the case. The difference was that the Marshal was treated with respect instead of disdain; he was being implored, not threatened. In the circumstances it was perhaps unnecessarily wicked of him to go away without offering any comment, to let them sweat it out until his written report arrived. It would arrive soon enough. It was all but finished. And it was, after all, the only satisfaction he would have out of the whole business, this letting them wait for his decision. They would never know he had reached it without any reference to them and that annoyed him. Perhaps to Captain Maestrangelo he could explain, but then, he wasn’t so good at explaining things so it was probably better not to try. Only he would ever know what was in his head at this moment. A twilit image of a young man dying in an old man’s body, mourning the loss of what he had never known. Another, happier image of a small freckled girl who didn’t look like anybody and on whose frail shoulders the entire Ulderighi inheritance would fall. The Marshal had great hopes of Fiorenza Corsi. If she didn’t sell the place, which was likely, she would fill it, with animals or ballerinas or her numerous children, or at any rate with life. And he would lighten her burden to the extent in his power. The Palazzo Ulderighi had claimed yet another victim but the Marshal had the last word. His two plump fingers typed doggedly on to the end of the page.

. . . that in the presence of the undersigned, Neri Corsi
Ulderighi Della Loggia, in attempting to observe the events
taking place in the courtyard below, either through an attack
of the chronic malady from which he suffered or through loss of
balance, accidentally fell to his death.

His tongue protruded slightly from the corner of his mouth as he concluded with the standard phrase.

Referred in accordance with the obligations incumbent on
my office—

MARSHAL IN CHIEF

STATION COMMANDANT

(Salvatore Guarnaccia)