The Marshal Makes His Report (6 page)

The Marshal remained by the well, looking up. The first and second floors were a blank, the tall brown shutters were all closed. On the third floor one rectangle of yellow light shone out. That could only be the doctor or the artist chap with the funny name. Not that there was any law against their playing the flute but he could swear it wasn’t coming from there. Somewhere higher up, if anything, it was so faint. He backed round the well and craned his neck. Above the corner where the dwarf’s door was, the building was much higher. There was some sort of tower at that corner silhouetted against the blue-green darkness of the summer night where more and more stars were appearing. Well, if the flute was being played up there, where he could make out two windows without shutters, it was being played in the dark.

‘Enough’s enough,’ muttered the Marshal. Enough of the whole lot for one day, the Marchesa Ulderighi and the chief public prosecutor included. And especially enough of this great prison of a house with its grim lines of columns, its closed gates and shutters and that single dismal light. Let it keep its secrets to itself if that’s what it wanted. With loud decisive steps that rang out on the flagstones the Marshal approached the dwarf’s door and hammered on it with his big fist.

Three

‘S
alva! What are you thinking of? You’ve got every light in the house on!’

The Marshal only grunted something incomprehensible from the bathroom. His wife, Teresa, waited a moment and when he didn’t emerge she slid the shirts she was holding into a drawer and went out of the bedroom, turning off the central light and one of the bedside lamps as she went.

When he joined her in the living-room she was watching television by the light of a small lamp with her knitting in her lap. He switched on the chandelier.

‘What’s the matter? Are you looking for something?’

‘No.’

‘Well, turn that off. There’s a lamp on already and we can’t see the television properly like that—why are you in your dressing-gown? Are you tired?’

‘A bit.’

‘Switch that light off, Salva, will you?’

‘You’re knitting. You’ll ruin your eyes.’

‘I don’t need to look at my knitting and I don’t need six bulbs burning all night for no reason. You’ll be the one to complain when the bill comes.’

‘Me?’ He was disconcerted. He switched off the light and sat down beside her, staring glumly at the screen.

‘What’s the matter? Have you had a bad day?’

‘A bit . . .’ He knew well enough that she could read him like a book. It was his habit when he came in to have a shower and exchange his uniform for something comfortable, but if he did it without pausing for a chat first, or if he stayed overlong under the shower washing away the day, then she knew something was up. Getting straight into pyjamas and dressing-gown was an obvious sign that he was putting a stop to a day that had been a disaster. He wished he’d thought of that before and not done it, but it was too late now.

She looked at him sideways, still knitting.

‘If you haven’t had enough to eat I can make you something.’

‘No . . . no.’

‘The boys wanted to wait up for you to tell you about the match but they’ve got school tomorrow.’

‘Mph.’ He stared at the news for a bit without taking a word of it in and then said, ‘Isn’t there a film or anything on?’

‘I don’t know. Look in the paper.’

But he sat where he was. If the worst came to the worst and he did get transferred, how would she take it? She’d spent years stuck down at home in Sicily looking after his sick mother while he was here in Florence. And when at last his mother had died and she’d come up here with the boys it had taken her a long time to settle in a strange city. She was settled enough by now, but when he tried to imagine telling her that they had to uproot again—and what about schools? The boys would have to change school and what if it were some way-out godforsaken place . . .

‘Salva!’

‘Eh?’

‘I’m asking you if you want a hot drink!’

‘No. Yes—I don’t know . . .’

She rolled up her knitting and went off to the kitchen, her felt slippers flapping softly on the marble tiles. ‘I’m making some camomile tea,’ she called back.

He got up and trailed after her, hovering.

‘Don’t plant yourself right there, I want a pan.’

He shifted, watching her.

‘Or there, I want to put the water on—Here, you do it.’

He lit the gas under the pan of water and stood watching it while Teresa got mugs and teabags.

‘I was wondering,’ he said to the pan.

‘Wandering, more like. What about?’

‘Well, if you feel really settled here now . . .’

‘Of course I am. What brought this on? I haven’t complained.’

‘No . . . no. Only at first you—’

‘These things take time, Salva. More for me than for you. You’ve got your work and your colleagues wherever you go. And even though it’s so bad for the boys to change school, they soon make friends. If it’s taken me longer it’s because I’m on my own—is it boiling?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mind out of the way. You can’t be going out making new friends at my age. I haven’t the time. Salva, will you
move,
I want to get to the rubbish bin. Anyway—’ she put the mug of tea in his hand—‘I don’t know what you’re worrying about. I’m used to Florence now and I like it. And thank goodness we won’t have to move again.’

They watched a film, or at least Teresa did. The Marshal tried his best to follow it in the hope of distracting himself, but for all his efforts at following the story he would continually find his thoughts back with the Ulderighi house, its inhabitants, the gloomy courtyard filled with piano music. Lorenzini, he’d noticed, had been quite unperturbed by it all, even by Grillo, who had evidently been less on the defensive with a fellow Florentine. A rum sort of character, Lorenzini had admitted.

‘Even so, you can be sure he knows everything that’s going on in that house.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘You know what his real job is?’

‘Some sort of odd job man, isn’t he?’

‘Nothing of the sort—oh, he probably does do odd jobs, but his business is looking after the young master.’

‘Ah, the son . . .’

‘Neri Ulderighi, who apparently hardly ever leaves his apartments which are at the top of the tower above where Grillo has his lair. It seems that was the original Ulderighi house, thirteenth-century. The rest, with the courtyard, was added three centuries later when they were in their heyday.’

‘How old is the boy?’

‘Early twenties, I gather.’

‘Mph. Not quite right in the head, is that it?’

‘Difficult to tell. Delicate is the word used. In and out of clinics all his life, never went to school. There even seems to have been some doubt about his surviving at all when he was a child. Mother smothers him, father never went near him. Mother’s latest plan is to marry him off to some suitable girl who’ll produce the next heir before it’s too late.’

‘And he’s not willing, I suppose.’

‘Oh, he willing all right. According to our friend Grillo, he can’t wait, though he’s never been near a girl in his life. Wants to escape from his ivory tower, perhaps, and Grillo’s all for it. “He needs to get married,” were his words. You know, he’s a pretty poisonous little creature but I’m convinced he’s really attached to the boy.’

‘And the others?’

‘Difficult to say. I reckon he’s a bit frightened of the Lady of the Manor, for all his cockiness. Corsi I’d say he never gave much thought to, dead or alive. The ones he really loathes are the tenants.’

‘Why?’

‘No reason I could pin down. Just for being there, I think. Breaking up the great family residence, not belonging. It may be they torment him, of course, but I wouldn’t have thought it. They’re all respectable people by the sound of them.’

The Marshal, who had long since had his faith in ‘respectable people’ thoroughly shaken, made no comment, and they parted in Piazza Pitti, Lorenzini to go cheerfully off to his young wife and baby in their little flat down Via Romana, the Marshal to climb the sloping forecourt in front of the Pitti Palace towards his station under the arch on the left. He wanted his own home, a shower, normality. He wanted, at least for tonight, to forget it all. So why was he thinking about it yet again? A better film might have helped. This one seemed to be nothing but one long quarrel between a husband and wife. What they were quarrelling about was beyond him.

‘What did I tell you!’ announced Teresa, pointing an accusatory knitting needle at the screen.

‘Eh . . . ?’

‘He knew all along. I told you she was being followed when she supposedly went to the hairdresser’s.’

‘Oh.’

‘By that man in the red sports car. I think he’s in league with the husband as well as blackmailing her.’

‘Ah.’

‘Salva, I’ve never known anybody as slow to catch on as you—see, he’s phoning him, so I’m right.’

She was right, thought the Marshal, about his being slow to catch on. Anybody with their wits about them would have kept quiet in front of any friend of the Marchesa Ulderighi’s until he’d found out who it was. He suffered his way through the rest of the film, the knot of anxiety in his chest growing tighter every time he tried to reason it away. He wanted to go to bed, though he was convinced that he’d never sleep. Oddly enough, he did fall asleep, and almost at once, but he woke much earlier than usual with the same thoughts running through his head as when he’d closed his eyes.

‘It’s a beautiful day,’ Teresa said, opening the window and pushing back the shutters. A shaft of fresh morning sunlight lit the room, carrying with it the scent of bay leaves from the Boboli Gardens. The knot of anxiety in the Marshal’s chest tightened.

‘Where was it stolen from? Where did you leave it?’

‘Right under my house in Via del Leone. The chain was on the wheel but it wasn’t chained to a pole or anything. I could kick myself. Ever since I got it I’ve hoiked it up three flights of stairs to my flat every night but last night after I’d been out to the cinema I was just so exhausted and I thought, well, who’d want to steal a bike like mine? It’s one of those mini things and I got it second-hand so it can’t be worth more than the price of a meal.’

‘The price of a fix, perhaps.’

‘I suppose so. I shouldn’t be wasting your time on it, I know.’ She was young, probably a student. Pretty, too, but that wasn’t why the Marshal was letting her waste his time, as she put it. He had a whole queue in his waiting-room of typical Monday-morning complainants with stolen bikes, mopeds and cars and minor break-ins after a weekend’s absence. On top of that were the season’s tourists glumly reporting snatched bags and cameras and lost passports. And he was going to give them all the time they wanted.

‘Have you checked with the
vigili?
’ The municipal police sometimes removed bicycles as well as towing away cars if they were left in a street due to be cleaned that night.

‘I did check. Tuesday’s our night for street cleaning but I called them anyway. They said they didn’t take anything from Via del Leone last night.’

Lorenzini tapped on the door and came in.

‘Excuse me, Marshal, but do you think I’d better deal with the German couple? Their flight’s at three this afternoon and they’ll have to go back to the consulate from here and get themselves temporary passports . . .’

‘All right.’

‘I can deal with all of them if you have to—’

‘No. No . . . just the Germans. I’ll see to the rest. Now then, Signorina, I suppose you don’t happen to know the frame number of your bicycle?’

Lorenzini shot an astonished glance over his shoulder as he went out but the Marshal didn’t care. He was doing his job, wasn’t he? His job was here, doing what he was doing now, not playing a part in the farce going on at the Palazzo Ulderighi. He had about as much chance of making a serious inquiry there as he had of finding this girl’s bicycle.

‘Do you know what I mean by the frame number?’

‘Yes, but I don’t know it. To tell you the truth—I know I can’t expect you to go looking for it but I was so blazing mad when I saw it had gone and that I’d miss my lecture that I started marching around the streets in a fury looking for it. Well, somebody’s got it, haven’t they? And I thought: Just let me see anybody riding past on my bike and they’re for it. I even thought I might see it parked somewhere and get it back for myself, you never know. Then I remembered a friend of mine doing that when his moped was stolen, only it turned out that the one he found wasn’t his, just looked like it. Needless to say the owner caught him apparently stealing it and he was arrested. He hadn’t reported his own being stolen, thinking it was a waste of time, and he spent two nights in jail before it got sorted out. So, anyway, now I’ve told you, if you hear I’ve been arrested for stealing a small orange bicycle you can help to get me out of prison.’ She stood up, smiling, and tucked her bag of books under her arm. ‘It was kind of you to let me get it off my chest. I can’t tell you how angry I was, especially because it’s worth so little. I mean, aren’t the poor supposed to steal from the rich or something? Oh well, I suppose I’ll have to find myself another one second-hand.’

The Marshal stood up and saw her to the door. As she went she laughed and said, ‘You can get them quite cheaply but of course they’re probably stolen.’

‘Very probably.’

As the girl crossed the waiting-room an elderly woman got up with difficulty from her chair and approached the Marshal with an anxious face.

‘Marshal, you have to help me. I can’t go on like this. I’m frightened to go in and out of my own house. Right on my doorstep they’re doing it, injecting themselves! Why can’t you do something?’

‘Come in, Signora,’ the Marshal said. ‘Come in and tell me all about it.’

And so he passed the morning, patient, dogged, doing his job. But for all he tried to give a hundred per cent of his attention to the small problems of the people in his Quarter, he was aware all the time of that knot of anxiety which never loosened and which tired him more than any amount of work could tire him. Every so often, as he listened to a tale of woe or reduced its human content to a series of dates, times and places on his typewriter, his large eyes would stray to the silent telephone beside him. For most of the morning his glance was one of apprehension as he half expected a furious call from the public prosecutor. Later, when it was obvious that no such call would arrive, his expression changed. Nobody cared, it seemed, whether he went round there or not, whether he went through the motions of an HSA inquiry or not, provided that he turned in a report to their liking.