The Haunted Martyr

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The Haunted Martyr Page 8

by Kenneth Cameron


  ‘He could have been pushed?’

  He shook his head. ‘The only way it works is if he didn’t land until he hit the bottom step. That’s why there’d be no blood except at the bottom.’

  ‘But you said he didn’t bleed.’

  ‘I said he didn’t bleed enough.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I think he could have been already dead when somebody threw him down the stairs.’ He curled his upper lips and glared at his boots. ‘And they weren’t ghosts!’

  CHAPTER

  5

  They met DiNapoli in the Galleria soon after. DiNapoli was dressed in the same clothes and the same old hat; his cheeks now had a faint glimmer of silver stubble. He was distressed by Janet’s being there, and when Denton introduced them, DiNapoli seemed as embarrassed as a small boy. He mumbled, ‘Piacere…’ and left the rest of the conventional greeting unsaid. It occurred to Denton that DiNapoli might think that a haunted house was no place for a lady—some curious personal code of chivalry. Even when the ghost was herself a lady.

  They sat at a table out on the great marble floor of the Galleria. The same people as yesterday seemed to be standing and sitting around them, doing the same things, as if they were a permanent display of the business life of Naples, as if they had been here all night and would be here all day. The sun was shining again and the glass cupola sent down golden light. Janet looked around her with what seemed to him honest delight. On the table next to her, Denton saw a newspaper open to the brief article that announced Fra Geraldo’s death: Incidente Tragico a Spagnuoli. Un Inglese Famoso è Morto. Denton tried to puzzle it out—‘tragico’ was clear enough; Spagnuoli was the area where the old man had lived. But ‘inglese famoso’ —famous Englishman? Had he been famous? But for what, except an obvious eccentricity?

  ‘You want caffè, caffè latte, or cappuccino?’ Recovered, DiNapoli was mediating between them and the waiter, whose rapid Italian Denton couldn’t follow.

  ‘We had caffè latte for breakfast. What’s cappuccino?’

  ‘Coffee wit’ milk.’

  ‘That’s caffè latte.’

  ‘They sort of stir the milk up. Give it a head.’

  ‘That’s why it’s thirty centésimi more?’

  DiNapoli said something to the waiter, listened to the answer. ‘He says they put some cinnamon on the milk. See, caffè latte comes mixed together. Wit’ cappuccino, they bring you a caffè and a jug of milk, you mix your own.’

  ‘For thirty centésimi extra.’

  ‘It’s a thing, you know? Like going first class when it’s the same train as third class.’

  ‘I’ll have the caffè.’ He glanced at Janet, who said, ‘Cappuccino, by all means.’ She was laughing over DiNapoli, not at him but from pleasure in him. Denton was pleased because she looked healthy and happy. When the waiter had gone, she said to DiNapoli, ‘So, what about this haunted house?’

  DiNapoli glanced at her as if her being there had changed everything and he no longer believed in what he was doing. He jerked his shoulders and looked at his hands and began to mumble. ‘The owner ask me if maybe Mist’ Denton was a journalist just doing this for a story. I told him he was a man of honor and he want the house.’ He looked at Janet again and she smiled back at him.

  ‘We haven’t seen the house; we don’t know if we want it,’ Denton said.

  DiNapoli recovered his confidence. ‘You gonna love it.’ This to Janet. Then, to Denton, ‘He says any night you wanta spend, good.’ He turned back to Janet, his voice suddenly apologetic. ‘He gotta stay all night and he gotta stay in the red room. It isn’t my idea.’

  She smiled. ‘We,’ she said. ‘We must stay in the red room.’ Denton thought she was going to pat DiNapoli’s hand. She was starting to include him in her collection of waifs and strays, Denton thought, of which she had several in London but none as yet in Naples. She said, ‘How will the owner know if we spend the whole night?’

  ‘The portiere locks you in. But, signora, you can’t—’

  Denton frowned. ‘What if there’s a fire?’

  ‘She lets you out. Or you go out the window, like the guy lost his pants. Scusi, signora.’

  ‘She lets us out,’ Janet said. Now she did pat DiNapoli’s hand. ‘All three of us.’

  DiNapoli’s face lost expression. ‘I ain’t going.’

  ‘Oh, you must. I want you to.’

  ‘I don’t want to rent no house!’

  ‘But Mr DiNapoli, suppose the ghost speaks to us in Italian?’

  ‘There ain’t no ghost.’

  ‘Surely you wouldn’t abandon us.’

  DiNapoli scowled and looked very much as if abandoning them looked fine to him. Their coffee came; he drank his at a gulp. Denton watched a ragged boy of ten or twelve making his way among the people in the Galleria, the boy offering something—a presepe figure, Denton saw now—and getting abrupt, now and then rough, refusals. He said, ‘One of the street kids.’

  ‘Which? Him? Yeah—a scugnizzo.’ DiNapoli chuckled without amusement. ‘Me, forty years ago.’ The scugnizzi were Naples’ street boys, ragged, barefoot, tough, living by their wits, often criminal. What the British called ‘street Arabs’, God knew why. Denton continued to watch this one. A waiter ran from a café and shook a towel one-handed at the boy as if he were a heifer that had got loose; the boy dodged aside, shouted, ‘Bacc’ mi minchia!’ and put his free hand over his crotch.

  Janet said, ‘Does that mean what I think it means? Baccia is “kiss”, isn’t it?’

  DiNapoli was shaking his head. ‘Scugnizz’, they grow up quick, who can keep up?’

  Janet studied the boy. ‘Do they have families?’

  ‘They got born, signora, but after that… These kids, they really live on the street.’ DiNapoli gestured to the boy, and, when he came close, to Denton’s surprise gave him a coin and said something that sounded gentle. The boy gave Janet and Denton a big grin and held up the presepe figure and said in a high voice, ‘Fatto da Fra Geraldo! A l’originale! Genuino!’

  ‘What’s he saying about Fra Geraldo?’

  The boy thrust the carved figure, a fisherman, into Denton’s face. ‘Fra Geraldo! E morto, questo è l’ultima! Non più!’

  DiNapoli said something to him, his voice sharp now; the boy pulled the figure back a little but turned to DiNapoli, one hand on a hip, his posture and expression deliberately both effeminate and mocking. DiNapoli pointed a finger, said something. The boy shrugged and backed away a couple of feet, and DiNapoli said, ‘He says the carving is by Fra Geraldo, he’s an old guy dressed up like a monk and carved dese t’ings for Christmas. Every year, he carve t’ree, he gives them to poor peoples to sell. They very famous. Every year he makes t’ree, every year the scugnizzi sell t’irty.’ He grinned. ‘I show you a place in Porto, they make Fra Geraldos better than Fra Geraldo.’

  The boy thrust the figure at them again. ‘A l’originale! E morto!’

  ‘He says Fra Geraldo’s dead. It’s the troot, he died last night, peoples say he got murdered by the rich peoples and the cops cover it up. I hear the story all over the place—it’s the Camorra, it’s the landlords, it’s the archbishop. But I don’ t’ink this kid got a real Fra Geraldo; he says “a l’originale ”, which means it’s the real t’ing, but it isn’t.’ He jerked his head at the boy. ‘Va via, scugnizz’.’ The boy let out a torrent of words; his head came forward; his lip curled; his free hand made a cone of fingers and twirled around the wrist.

  Denton was thinking of the wood shaving he had found in the armoire in the dead man’s house. ‘Tell him I’m interested in buying a real Fra Geraldo.’

  DiNapoli spoke, listened, and said, ‘He says this one is real, I tell him he’s making wool wit’out sheep, he says he can get a real one for hundred lire. He’s dreaming.’ Denton did the figures in his head: a hundred lire was almost four pounds.

  ‘Can you tell if it’s a real one?’

  ‘Well—I know a guy makes them, he says he can alway
s tell. He’d want a few lire to say.’

  ‘Tell the scugnizzo I’ll pay thirty lire for a real one—but I’ll get it checked first.’

  DiNapoli said something and the boy ran off, shouting something back as he headed for the Galleria’s entrance. ‘He says he see me tomorrow. He don’t say where or when. Them kids are no good,’ DiNapoli said.

  Janet smiled. ‘Then why did you give him money?’

  DiNapoli shrugged. ‘You give everybody a soldo. The kid’s hungry. I been in that place.’

  ‘But then he insulted you—didn’t he?’

  ‘That’s just the way they are.’

  Denton wanted to know more about Fra Geraldo’s carving. He had seen nothing in the old man’s house to suggest any talent of that sort, and only now did the shaving suggest that some sort of woodworking might have gone on at Palazzo Minerva. The figure the boy had held out to him had been brilliantly detailed, the work of a craftsman. Even if it had not been ‘a l’originale’, it had been meant to imitate quality work. He tried now to ask DiNapoli about it, but Janet got in ahead of him and said, ‘Mr DiNapoli, you will come with us to this house, won’t you!’

  DiNapoli screwed up his face. ‘When you wanta go?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  DiNapoli looked bleak. ‘You don’t lose no time!’ He turned to Denton. ‘You bringing your guns?’

  ‘They won’t let me have guns in Italy. But Mrs Striker is better than a gun.’

  DiNapoli bent lower over the table. ‘Maybe you better forget it.’

  Janet touched him again and held his eyes. ‘We have to be out of our pensione the day after tomorrow. If we don’t find a place to live, we’ll be wretched. Denton won’t be able to write. And I shall be terribly unhappy.’ She put her hand over his and squeezed. ‘Please.’

  DiNapoli pulled down one side of his mouth. ‘Maybe if I brung some holy water—’

  ‘We’ll bring wine. Also a cold supper. What time? Nine? Midnight? Three in the morning?’

  DiNapoli was shaking his head. ‘I didn’t figure for a lady, signora. I mean, somet’ing gonna happen, has to, otherwise why those peoples run away? It ain’t right you should be there.’

  ‘Mr DiNapoli, when you know me better, you’ll know I was meant to be there. I wouldn’t miss the chance to meet a woman who wants to kill men who remind her of her husband. I’ve often wanted to do the same thing.’ She smiled.

  DiNapoli felt the impact of her. He shook his head. He looked into the middle distance of the Galleria. ‘I t’ink I got into something over my head here.’

  Denton got up and patted his shoulder. ‘It’ll make a fine story to tell your grandchildren.’

  Janet stood. ‘And you can tell us all about yourself while we wait for the ghost.’

  DiNapoli looked at her and then at Denton. He stood, put his awful hat on his head. ‘I meet you at your pensione at ten o’clock.’ He looked sombre. ‘Only for you, signora.’

  As they walked away, her hand through Denton’s arm, she said, ‘One of us had better take a chamber pot.’

  ‘Three, if the ghost shows up.’

  ‘I like your confidence man.’

  ‘I could tell.’

  ‘He’s the first nice person I’ve met since we got to Naples. Except for Lucy. And Lucy’s only a child. Although I think he’s a child, too. Don’t you? Something completely innocent about him, for all you say he’s some sort of crook. Isn’t he? I saw a few like him in prison—utterly baffled, sweet, trying so hard to be as awful as the rest of us…’ And so talking, they made their way up the Via Toledo.

  Heat lightning flashed across the low lid of clouds as they came out of the pensione to the waiting cab. Building fronts were fitfully lighted, as if a yellow blush had passed across them; the murmur of thunder started seconds later and echoed back from the Vomero hill and Posillipo. Denton said, ‘I’d have preferred a completely dark and stormy night. Meeting ghosts calls for clichés by the bucket.’

  DiNapoli was waiting for them at the carriage, the door held open. He hadn’t come into the pensione but had sent in a message that he was there, a gesture that told Denton that he was tactful, knew he might cause them trouble by appearing—but what would a confidence man be but tactful? Janet sensed it, too; she whispered, ‘A nice consideration he has. This is a rare bird, Denton.’

  Denton grunted.

  DiNapoli started to get up with the driver, but Janet made him get into the carriage with them. ‘You’re not a courier,’ she said sharply. ‘You’re not a servant.’

  His grin was visible in a slow gleam of lightning, as if a match had been struck and burned and gone out. ‘Signor Nessuno,’ he said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Mr Nobody.’

  ‘I want you to teach me Italian, Mr DiNapoli. I have a book, but I’m no good at it. Where are we? Oh, there’s the Galleria; we were there this morning. Now where are we going?’

  DiNapoli began to point out landmarks in the sporadic light—the Castel Nuovo, a black presence blotting out the clouds; the Gesu Nuovo church. Denton let him and Janet talk. He had a picnic basket between his feet, another beside him, a china chamber pot in his lap, wrapped in one of his overcoats.

  Late as it was, the streets were crowded. The cafés were open, warm-looking places that attracted him. He smelled the bitter smoke of roasting chestnuts; horses and urine; cooking (a people who ate late)—not much of meat, but nonetheless promising good tastes. They passed a street that had been turned into a presepe market, the sense of imminent Christmas strong despite an unseasonal warmth. He felt a low excitement, the beginning of an adventure—whatever ‘adventure’ meant at his age. Perhaps only the first step towards a book.

  DiNapoli leaned towards Janet, opposite whom he was sitting. When she smiled at him, he said, ‘I teach you how to cook Italian, if you like.’

  ‘Oh, Mr DiNapoli, I can’t cook English!’

  Even in the near-darkness, Denton could see him make a face. ‘English cooking ain’t food. Italian food is food. I teach you. You love it.’

  Janet laughed. Denton wondered if DiNapoli was in fact the innocent she thought, or if he was working an elaborate finagle that would end with their being robbed.

  The carriage turned right into a narrower street. DiNapoli pointed into the darkness and said it was Sant’Angelo del Nilo. It could have been the Tower of London for all Denton could tell. ‘Not long now,’ DiNapoli said. He sighed.

  They were headed towards the water. Denton could smell the sea, or thought he could, a salty presence under the other odours. Maybe it had been there all along. The streets were darker now and narrower, fewer people moving. Passing a lighted doorway, he heard a burst of laughter; a pretty woman looked out, met his eyes for an instant. They left the light behind and passed into near-darkness.

  The carriage pulled up in front of a blackness with a deeper blackness beyond it. Denton thought he could see, after staring into it for some seconds, a shallow area, perhaps once a courtyard, with unknowable shapes at its back. Looking up, he saw the sky, yellow, turbid, silhouetted against it the bulk of a building. ‘This is it?’ he said.

  DiNapoli grunted.

  ‘They don’t seem to be expecting us,’ Janet said. ‘Help me down, Denton.’

  He got down, held up a hand. DiNapoli followed, handing various bundles to Denton, who was fumbling in his overcoat pocket for his flash-light. ‘I put in a new battery,’ he said. He turned it on. Janet was paying the carriage driver. The carriage rolled away and disappeared into the darkness, reappearing in the pale, scummy green of a gas light and then fading for good.

  Janet looked into the black space. ‘I wish I’d had the sense to look at it in daylight.’

  Denton tried to shine the flash-light on it, but the light was too feeble. ‘Maybe we’ll get a bolt of lightning.’ A low growl of thunder sounded far away beyond the Vomero hill.

  DiNapoli said. ‘They don’t give the peoples in this part of town much light.’ H
e picked up the picnic baskets and walked towards the deepest dark. ‘I go knock.’ But before he had gone a dozen feet, a rectangle of light opened ahead of him, bright only because it was set in absolute blackness. A point of light moved into it. A candle, Denton guessed, and, holding it, a figure too dim to be defined.

  ‘I expect the signature music for the ghost at any moment,’ Janet whispered. She pressed against him, squeezing his left arm. He started after DiNapoli and she said, ‘Don’t forget the chamber pot.’

  DiNapoli began to speak as he approached the doorway, his voice too low to hear. His tone suggested a question; no answer came. He said something else. Denton thought he must be speaking dialect, which was enough unlike Italian as to be incomprehensible—if he could have understood Italian. The holder of the candle became visible when they got close, an elderly woman in a black dress from some style that might have gone back to the sixties. She was gaunt, hard looking, middling tall; she wore a black shawl over her head and shoulders. When all three were lined up in front of her as if they were going to sing her a carol, she said, ‘Entrate.’

  Going in the wide doorway, DiNapoli said the requisite ‘Permesso’, and, to Denton’s surprise, so did Janet. The old woman said nothing, but slammed the door behind them with a sound that might have meant that all hope was to be abandoned. She turned a huge key and put it in a pocket, shot two big bolts, the second with so much difficulty that Denton reached forward to help her. She snarled something and leaned into the bolt and drove it home.

  ‘Sono la portiere,’ she said to them. I am the porter. That much was obvious. She lifted her chin. ‘Sopra.’ Up.

  ‘Come se chiama, signora?’ Janet said, her accent atrocious. Maybe the old woman was deaf, or maybe she had too much contempt for them to be bothered to tell them her name. She pushed past them and led them to a flight of stone stairs and started up, carrying the candle a little higher as a nominal concession to her visitors.

  ‘I thought there was electricity,’ Denton said. DiNapoli mumbled something to the old woman and got a single-word answer. He turned back to Denton, who was coming last, and said, ‘It ain’t turned on.’

 

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