The Marshal Makes His Report (3 page)

‘Shit . . .’

‘What did I tell you?’ wailed his wife. ‘Time and time again I’ve said it and nobody takes a blind bit of notice. Well, I’m glad, do you know that! I’m
glad.
Because even she’ll think twice before helping him again if you ask me, and so that’ll be the end of it. Even if they put him away, at least it’ll be the end! You’ll not listen to me but you’ll learn—’

‘Keep quiet, you stupid cow!’

The Marshal, understanding nothing, stood where he was and remained silent. The woman shuffled back through the service door and continued her sobs and imprecations out of sight.

‘Well?’ The porter pushed his hands into his pockets in an attempt to look nonchalant but at once pulled them out again because of the white gloves. ‘Is he hurt himself or has he damaged somebody else, or what?’

The Marshal, nonplussed, only stared back at him with large bulging eyes.

As if remembering something, the porter said, ‘What time is it, anyway?’

‘The time . . . ?’ The Marshal glanced at his watch. ‘A quarter to six.’

‘But they only kicked off at half past five, so how could you have got here—or did it happen before?’

‘Before . . .’ Did he mean the concert?

‘Well, whatever happened, he’s not to blame, you can take that from me. What can you expect? They go for him, they always have done. You can stand so much but then sooner or later something has to give, am I right? You haven’t said whether he’s hurt?’

‘He’s dead.’ The words were no sooner out when the expression on the porter’s wizened face told him that they couldn’t be talking about the same person. He’d taken it like a blow in the stomach and was swaying on his feet now as though he might fall.

‘Easy,’ the Marshal said going closer and getting hold of the smaller man’s arm. Nobody was that fond of their employer. ‘Buongianni Corsi. I’m talking about Buongianni Corsi. There’s been an accident. He’s dead. You’d better sit down a minute.’ The porter let himself be led to a chair and sank down in it with a white-gloved hand against his chest.

‘Nearly did for me . . . heart’s not so good. Nearly did for me.’

‘I’m sorry. Shouldn’t you take something?’

‘Ada! Ada!’ Loud sobs were still issuing from the room beyond and his wife didn’t hear him.

‘I’ll get her,’ the Marshal said. He went through the service door into a small kitchen-cum-storeroom. She was sitting on a cardboard box with ‘Bottles. With Care’ printed on it, her feet planted wide apart, her fists descending limply on her knees in time with her sobs.

‘Your husband needs some medicine,’ he interrupted her a bit brusquely. There would be time enough later to find out what all this was about and he didn’t want another dead man on his hands.

She got to her feet and pushed her hair back, forgetting about the little lace cap, which went askew.

‘Yes! Medicine! It’s me that’ll end up in hospital between the two of them but they’ll not listen. I can talk till I’m blue in the face . . .’ Nevertheless she went off through a further door, presumably in search of whatever her husband required.

The Marshal filled one of the wineglasses from the table with water and went back to the porter. He was still sitting down and there was a bluish tinge about his lips but he seemed calmer.

‘Your wife’s bringing you something.’ He gave him the water.

‘Thanks.’ He sipped at it, keeping his eyes fixed on the double doors which stood open. The music was still playing.

‘They’ll be coming through before long. I’ll have to—’

‘Sit where you are,’ the Marshal said, ‘or maybe we should go back there.’ He indicated the kitchen.

‘If we’re not ready for them there’ll be hell to pay. The Marchesa—’

‘The Marchesa will have other things to think about. Her husband’s dead.’

‘That’s true . . . You said, didn’t you, an accident. In his car?’

‘No. Why wasn’t he up here at the concert, do you know?’

‘Him? He never comes. Not his style. Leaves all that stuff to her.’

‘Will there be any other members of the family in there with her? Someone who’d know how to break the news to her?’

‘Well . . . the aunt’ll be there, I suppose. Even so, I wouldn’t worry so much on that score if I were you.’

‘Are there any children?’

‘Neri . . .’ The porter grimaced. ‘You’ll not see him, nobody ever does. He’ll be above.’ He took another sip of water and put his head down near his knees. ‘Feel a bit dizzy . . .’

The Marshal took the glass from him. ‘Your wife’s a long time coming back.’

‘It’s all those stairs . . .’ He fell silent as though it fatigued him to talk. The wife did come back at last, out of breath and with her cap still askew. She gave him two tablets which he gulped down greedily. She turned to the Marshal. She had stopped crying and her look was defiant.

‘Well? What’s he done?’

‘You have a son, is that it? Is that who you’re worrying about?’ By this time the Marshal had put two and two together.

‘Who should I be worrying about? If he went for somebody he had good reason! They all pick on him— I’ve warned him to give it up, I’ve warned him—’

‘Hold your noise!’ shouted her husband, and then clutched at his chest again. He shut his eyes at the pain and said, ‘He’s come about Corsi. There’s been an accident. He’s dead.’

The woman was silenced. She gaped about her at the serried ranks of bottles as though their presence must indicate that their producer was still alive.

‘What happens next?’ the Marshal asked, nodding his head towards the other room where the music had ended and there came the sound of applause.

‘They’ll all be coming in here.’ She straightened her apron. ‘Just look at the state I’m in . . .’ She didn’t think of the cap and the Marshal didn’t like to say anything.

‘And who’s going to tell her?’

‘I am.’

‘Rather you than me. Not that there was any love lost . . . Even so . . .’

‘Can you two carry on as normal here?’ the Marshal interrupted. ‘I’ll keep her in the other room, if possible—’

But the two of them got to their feet, not listening to him. With a smartness that surprised him they had taken their places, one behind each of the long tables, and were pouring very modest amounts of the famous apéritif into the rows of shining glasses when the doors of the salon opposite burst open.

Two

T
he crowd that poured into the room caused the Marshal to back up slightly but then he stopped, his face set and expressionless, standing his ground. He was well aware of how out of place he looked in his dark uniform among the pale silk and linen, in his silent immobility against the swirl of chattering movement. One or two women gave him a questioning glance before turning away to continue their conversation or reach for their glasses. No one spoke to him. They were almost all women and none of them young. One, very formally dressed and heavily made up, walked with the aid of two sticks. The room filled up with an oppressive mixture of strong perfumes. A woman backed into him as she withdrew from the long table, glass in hand, and turned as if to apologize but her expression froze as she saw him. With a swift icy glance that took him in from head to foot and dismissed him from her world, she turned and went on talking.

‘
So
talented, I think, and rather good-looking, but of course you saw “the friend” . . . My dear, Bianca for once was rather at a loss but what could she do . . .’

‘She should have refused. Of course, I agree we wouldn’t want to lose dear, dear Emilio. Nevertheless—’

‘Oh, Bianca gets away with anything, even this!’

The Marshal, watching and listening, wondered what ‘this’ referred to and thought perhaps she didn’t care for what was in her glass. There was nothing else on offer, he noticed.

‘Do you think,’ a voice whispered, so close to his ear that he thought he was being spoken to, ‘that Emilio is actually homosexual?’ It was the heavily painted old lady with the two sticks speaking not to him but to a much younger woman who looked amused.

‘Of course. You can’t imagine he’s ever tried to hide it.’ She noticed the Marshal’s turning to stare which seemed to amuse her even more. The other woman, noticing nothing, insisted: ‘But you’re young and know about these things—is it a genetic defect of some sort or, as they say, psychosomatic? I don’t understand . . .’

The porter appeared at the Marshal’s elbow with a tray of full glasses.

‘You might as well . . .’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Well go through, then. She’ll be in there.’ He nodded towards the opposite salon.

The Marshal pushed his way through to the door. The bigger room was now almost empty. Three men, all impeccably dressed in silk suits and with sleek grey hair, stood talking seriously near the rows of empty gilded chairs. One very young man sat alone on a plain wooden stool almost behind the door, where the Marshal had been unable to see him when he had first glanced in so briefly. At the front of the room stood a grand piano. To the Marshal’s surprise there were no other instruments, only a stereo set on an antique table. In front of this stood a good-looking young man, ‘dear Emilio’, perhaps? He was talking animatedly to a tall, elegant woman in white who had her back to the Marshal. Avoiding the tiny chairs that would surely collapse if his great weight so much as brushed against them, he trod the polished floor almost on tiptoe and, hat in hand, approached them.

As he came near, the young man stopped in mid-sentence to stare at him. The woman turned.

‘Signora Marchesa . . .’

‘Yes?’ Her eyes took him in from head to foot just as the other woman’s had done but with a good deal more effect. They were very large black eyes but her hair was blonde and her skin white. She wasn’t young, certainly over forty, but she was an extremely beautiful woman indeed and there was an aura surrounding her that deterred the Marshal from going too close. The expression in her bright disdainful eyes so unnerved him that he could hardly have felt more humiliated if he had skidded on the shining floor and smashed a dozen of those frivolous little chairs. He swallowed and looked at the young man as he spoke so as to avoid her eyes.

‘I have some bad news, I’m afraid. If I could speak to you alone . . .’

‘Bad news . . . ?’ She inclined her head slightly as if making an effort to believe him, then she turned to the young man and smiled. He was dismissed. The Marshal watched him go. Near the door he spoke to the man seated on the stool, who got up hastily and with a backward scowl at the room in general went out with him.

‘Rather a fortunate interruption . . .’ the Marchesa murmured with a faint smile. ‘Artists are a race apart, don’t you feel? So that whatever their origins . . . but one must draw the line . . . Dear Emilio. Well, I’m quite sure he won’t make that mistake again—What exactly can I do for you?’

The sudden change of tone took him aback.

‘I . . . It’s bad news, I’m afraid—’

‘Ah yes, so you said. Shouldn’t you tell me who you are, exactly?’

‘Guarnaccia. Marshal of carabinieri, Palazzo Pitti station.’

‘Palazzo Pitti? There’s a carabinieri station there? What an extraordinary thing, but how nice for you. Would you care to sit down?’

‘No! I . . . no, thank you.’ Nothing would have induced him to risk planting his weight on one of those tiny chairs. He was beginning to sweat with embarrassment and didn’t really take in a word of what the Marchesa was saying. He could only stare at her with his big eyes. He felt he was looking at someone wearing a mask, trying to fathom her real expression behind it. The mask was one of faint surprise touched with disdain. The eyes looked out through it as hard and bright as ice.

‘I was passing here,’ he began after a slight cough, ‘when I was called in by a man . . . a dwarf—’

‘Grillo?’

‘Grillo, yes—I presume he works for you?’

‘Works? Well, yes, he does odd jobs about the place. He’s been with us since he was a child. Part of the family in a way.’

The Marshal took this to mean that they didn’t pay him and that his position was uninsured and illegal, but he had no intention of going into that. He had enough on his plate already without stirring anything up in that direction. Noticing that he was turning his hat slowly round and round between his large hands, he stopped himself doing it and, holding the brim tightly, said his piece.

‘This Grillo took me to a room off the courtyard, a gun room. He told me he’d gone in there himself to clean the guns. Your husband was there. Possibly he’d been cleaning one of the guns himself and there was an accident. He’s dead, Signora Marchesa.’

‘Buongianni? Dead . . . ?’ The mask was recomposed into one of distressed astonishment. The eyes didn’t falter for a second. She didn’t even find it necessary to look away from him and he knew as surely as if she’d confessed it that she’d been ready for him, or for whoever else might have brought her this news. The Marshal himself, however, was far from ready for her next move. There was no pretence of grief or anything approaching it. The hard icy glance held his for long enough to establish her hold on the situation and his own irrelevance. Then she turned her head very slightly and raised her voice.

‘Gianpiero.’

One of the silk-suited men at the back of the room detached himself from the other two and approached.

‘What’s going on here?’ He took in the Marshal’s uniform and then turned to the Marchesa and took her arm. ‘Has there been an accident of some sort? You look distressed.’

‘It’s Buongianni. An accident, yes. This is Marshal . . .’

‘Guarnaccia.’

‘I do beg your pardon. Dear Gianpiero, thank goodness you’re here, I suppose we must go down and look. Do you think . . . ?’ She glanced down the room to the remaining two grey-haired men.

‘They should certainly be with us.’ He addressed the Marshal then in brusque authoritative tones. ‘What sort of accident, and where?’

The Marshal was nettled. For the moment, at least, he was supposed to be in charge of the situation but he might have been one of the servants.

‘It may or may not have been an accident. That’s something we must look into. He’s in the gun room on the ground floor.’