The Haunted Martyr

by Kenneth Cameron

  ‘So Fra Geraldo never came to see you? Never visited your father? Didn’t pay any money?’

  Formoso looked away towards the door. It was made of the same rough boards as the bar, held loosely by an old-fashioned thumb latch, and the wind was causing it to open almost an inch and rattle the latch. Cold air blew across the dirt floor. Formoso said in a musing voice, ‘My father got some money sometimes. Not a lot. I don’t where he got it. Mostly, he played the lottery with it.’

  Denton had little more to ask. He did mention the police, which made Formoso indignant: why would the police have anything to do with the singing school? Denton didn’t know what the police had been like back then—1857, 1858, Italy not yet unified, the corrupt Bourbons still trying to hold on to Naples. He gave Formoso another five lire, to DiNapoli’s disgust, and left.

  Outside, he walked into the guttering light of a small shrine, the candle flames thin and streaming in the wind, and looked back at the enoteca. Two of the men who had been standing at the bar came out and looked at them. Denton slid the sword a foot out of the stick and let them see the shine of the metal.

  ‘I don’ think they mean nothing,’ DiNapoli said.

  ‘Just helping them be certain that’s what they mean.’

  They walked towards the brighter lights of the Strada del Duomo, where Denton turned left to go home. DiNapoli was going another way and said goodnight. After he had gone, Denton could hear him singing, the clear tenor voice offering one of those sentimental Neapolitan songs to the night. Denton listened, then turned towards home. DiNapoli had taught him a word, sfiducia, distrust, and now Denton found himself applying it to DiNapoli himself. They saw each other less with Janet not there, and something had come faintly between them, perhaps nothing more than Denton’s own cynicism. Yet he found he felt sfiducia towards DiNapoli. Maybe it was only the spying. But he couldn’t resist walking that ugly cat, suspicion, back to the beginning: it had been DiNapoli who had found him in the Galleria, not the other way around. Suppose it had been deliberate? Suppose the Casa Gialla, the puppet-ghost, the dying boy in the cellar, had all been part of a scheme? But it was ridiculous: there was no way anybody could have predicted that Denton would find the boy or that he would go to Scuttini or even that he would stay in the Casa Gialla. And none of it had anything to do with Fra Geraldo, who had come to Denton at the pensione before the DiNapoli and the Casa Gialla and Scuttini and Gianaculo had even entered his life.

  And who would be behind such a crazy plan? Naples, like all of Italy, loved conspiracies, but they were usually no more real than the ghosts, this one least of all. No, his sfiducia was absurd: DiNapoli was a petty informer, both to the police and the Scuttini, but he was loyal to Janet and, Denton hoped, to him. Hoped.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Two evenings later, sitting in the red room because it was more comfortable than his own and because, he supposed, it gave him some sense of Janet, he heard muffled sounds downstairs and the thud of the door. It was late—he was filling time until he went out to eat, and doing that only to fill more time—and he knew nobody who would call then. It was likely DiNapoli, he thought, but when the maid appeared and curtsied, she handed him a calling card with ‘Harriet Guttmann’ embossed on it and, written below in very black pencil and underlined twice, I must see you!!!!! Harriet Guttmann, Lucy Newcombe’s plump friend, now as vanished as Lucy herself since Janet had gone away.

  He had learned the Italian for Show him up, so he said those words, the feminine escaping him. He half expected to see Lucy, as well, but realised that if Harriet’s visit was worth five exclamation marks it was probably about Lucy, and she had likely come alone.

  And he was right. Pink-cheeked as if she had been running, Harriet appeared in the doorway and, for the first time since he had met her at the pensione, seemed to be without words. He was standing by then; he said, to cover what seemed to be confusion—maybe she was still flustered by Janet’s absence, thus being along in the house with him (what would her mother say?)—‘Miss Guttmann, how good to see you. Do sit down. Won’t you take your cloak off?’

  The maid was hovering behind her. Harriet lurched into the room and waved at the girl to go away, and when, after a frightened glance at Denton, the maid had fled, Harriet closed the door with something like a slam and, leaning back against it, said, ‘You must help us!’

  ‘Of course—Miss Guttmann—what is it?’

  ‘Oh, Mr Denton, it’s Lucy! It’s the awful marchese—her mother has engaged her to the brute. They’ve signed papers! With a notary!’

  ‘I doubt he’s a brute, Miss Guttmann. Do sit down—’

  ‘If he marries her against her will, he’s a brute. She’ll die of it!’ She was tearing at the ribbons that held her hat to her head. ‘They’ll lock her up in some antiquated palazzo and they’ll be horrible to her and she’ll die.’ She threw herself into a chair and started to weep. He offered her wine; she refused with a disgust that would have been justified by his offering her dog’s piss and said between sobs, ‘I can’t stay. I’m supposed to be at the opera—I was at the opera and I ran out during the overture—It’s all awful!’

  ‘Lucy only has to say “no”. You don’t need my help for that. She’s as capable as I am of telling her mother and the marchese to go suck eggs.’

  ‘But she can’t! She’s soft; she’s…nice! She doesn’t want anybody to feel bad ever. She’s really very sweet and very kind, but she doesn’t have, you know—spine.’ She pulled a handkerchief from a sleeve and snuffled and sniffled and alternately balled the handkerchief and pulled it flat over a knee.

  ‘Miss Guttmann, it really isn’t my business to interfere in. Anyway, what can I do?’

  ‘You can go to your friend the Camorra man! He could fix it in a twinkling. They can fix anything.’

  ‘“My” Camorra man?’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea; it was Mrs Striker’s. She said it one day. Before she left. She said you had done a favour for a bigwig in the Camorra and you could put a stop to it in a second.’

  Denton wanted to say, Damn Mrs Striker!, which he didn’t mean, but he thought that the ‘Camorra man’ wasn’t Janet’s business, and then saw that it was, because she was the one who’d charmed him. Still, the idea of going to Scuttini was loathsome. ‘Maybe Lucy needs to grow herself a spine.’

  ‘She can’t! And it’s worse since Mrs Striker left!’ Harriet had tears in her eyes again. ‘Can you keep a secret, Mr Denton? Promise me it will be a secret! I shouldn’t tell you but I must, and Lucy would be broken hearted if she knew you knew, but—She’s in love, Mr Denton. Back in the States. She has an understanding with somebody.’ Her wet, rather cow-like eyes appealed to him.

  ‘“Somebody”.’

  ‘A young man. In Rochester. He’s quite young—well, older than Lucy by several years—and he’s got a good job at his father’s business and he’ll own it one day, so he’ll be a good husband. Oh, I know it doesn’t sound much! But it’s what Lucy wants. Lucy isn’t a very modern woman, Mr Denton. I know you don’t think much of her; she doesn’t have ambitions and she doesn’t want to be terrifically cultured or anything like that—my goodness, she didn’t even want to leave Rochester to come to Italy!—but she’s a good, sweet girl and if she’s allowed to marry her young man, she’ll have a lovely wedding and her father will build them a fine house on East Avenue and her husband will love her and it will be all she ever wants. Don’t you see?’

  Denton let his voice become very dry. ‘You’re asking me to do something extraordinary for a very ordinary, dull, uninteresting young woman, is that it? What could be more sensible?’

  Harriet gripped her hands together as if she were trying to crush the balled handkerchief between her palms. ‘If she marries the marchese she will suffer!’

  ‘She’ll suffer regardless. That’s life, Miss Guttmann.’

  ‘No, no, she’ll be protected if she marries her young man. Please!’ She was weeping again.

  H
e thought of Janet’s observation that Harriet’s affection for Lucy went beyond friendship. Well, perhaps—but to her credit, Harriet didn’t want to save Lucy for herself.

  Harriet said, her voice suddenly flat, ‘It isn’t as if I were asking for some huge thing.’

  ‘What are you asking for, then?’

  ‘Only for you to go to the Camorra man and ask him to call the marchese off. It’s nothing! Janet said it would be nothing!’

  Denton looked at her for some time and then got up and walked around the room, stopping at the window to stare out, then turning back and coming to her. ‘Do you understand what this “nothing” means, Miss Guttmann?’

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘But it does—for me and for you. Do you know what “dining with the devil” means?’

  ‘Of course, but—’

  ‘Do you understand that Scuttini is the devil?’

  ‘I’m sure he’s quite a bad man, and quite low and awful, but—’

  ‘Every dishonest soldo that changes hands in Naples helps to make Scuttini and his ilk richer. Every woman Lucy’s age who goes into prostitution—don’t gasp, Miss Guttmann, I’m sure you know the word—helps to make him richer. Every man and woman who bet five soldi a week on the “little game”—and always lose—help to make Scuttini rich. But more to the point—you and me—do you know what it means if we ask him to save Lucy? It means that we—and Lucy—profit from his power, and it means we are just as guilty as he is.’

  ‘We won’t have done anything wrong!’

  ‘You mean we can wash our hands and turn away. You can, I think, for now, but maybe when you’re older you’ll see you didn’t in fact get away clean. Nor will Lucy see it, and I doubt that she’ll ever have either the courage or the brain to see at what price she’d have bought her “happiness”.’

  ‘If it will save Lucy, I’d do a deal with the devil himself!’

  ‘Sell your integrity for a flibbertigibbet? Then you’re a fool.’

  ‘All right, I’m a fool!’ She was angry now and she dared to show it. She stood to face him, as any young woman would who had watched such a scene played in melodrama. ‘Will you do it or won’t you?’

  He certainly didn’t want Lucy’s gratitude, nor Harriet’s for the matter of that. Yet he knew that he must do it, because she had put him in a box from which he could escape only by compromising himself or by seeming, even to himself, to be a prig. And Janet’s last words had been ‘For me, Denton, if not for her.’ He said, ‘I’ll need to shop for a long spoon.’

  ‘Oh—!’ She clapped her hands together, the effect lost because the handkerchief came between them. He thought for an instant she was going to rush across the room and kiss him; he saw her think of it, want to do it, and then stop herself. She said, ‘I have to be back before the second act starts!’ and she ran for the door.

  He didn’t take DiNapoli with him to see Doro Scuttini. Not that he couldn’t have used him to translate, but—la sfiducia.

  Scuttini lived in one of the tall buildings on the boundary where Mercato met Vicaria, an area impacted with people since the Risanamento. From the outside, Scuttini’s building was no different from the fondaci, dark, austere, ugly. Inside, however, was another matter. Two middle-aged tough types met him in the entry, which carried the ugliness of the outside into the interior, so that anyone looking in would see only another warren of poverty.

  Once on the stairways, however, he found that everything was better, cleaner, brighter. Windows had been opened on an interior courtyard larger than the dark, chimney-like holes of the real fondaci; light and fresh air came in. Above the primo piano, the stairs were carpeted.

  The two mugs led him to a hallway, also carpeted, men and women lounging in doorways as if it were a vico, studying him with interest and perhaps amusement. They went through a doorway that Denton thought would lead to an apartment, but it took them to another stairway with still better carpet and bigger windows. Hefty men in dark suits, tieless, stood at the top and bottom; the bulges in their jackets were guns, he thought. A double shotgun leaned in a corner at the top.

  There was a door, then a kind of foyer, yet two more guappi waiting. One of them opened Denton’s jacket and felt around his waist and under his arms and took his stick away. Denton was led into a large, high-ceilinged apartment crowded with furnishings in what even Denton, who claimed no taste, knew was bad taste. One of the guappi took his hat and coat and pointed unnecessarily at the compare.

  Scuttini was sitting on a horsehair sofa big enough, had it been supplied with four sets of oars, to have crossed to Capri on. He was dressed like a businessman—tight grey suit, well-filled waistcoat, thick silk necktie—but he hadn’t shaved. He didn’t get up, but nodded as Denton crossed the room towards him and patted a place beside him on the slippery horsehair.

  ‘You will understand today well enough what I say in Italian? You don’t bring your little man?’ That was his greeting. He waved a hand at the guappi and said something and they all waited until a tall, cadaverous man in a black suit was brought in. He stood next to Scuttini and, when needed, translated into both Italian and English.

  Denton sat down, regretted doing so because he couldn’t see Scuttini’s eyes. He moved to an armchair opposite, and Scuttini frowned. He glanced at the two men who had remained in the big room with them, as if he were checking to make sure he had not lost face.

  ‘I wish to ask something,’ Denton said.

  Scuttini nodded. ‘I owe you.’ He said it rather grudgingly.

  ‘That is why I can ask you. How is your grandson?’

  Scuttini raised his chin. ‘Well. He is living on one of my farms in Apuglia. I thought to get him away from bad influences.’ As if to himself, he said, ‘He is young and foolish. You like your house?’

  ‘We like it.’

  ‘You got my gift of wine?’

  ‘We did, and wrote to thank you.’

  ‘I can send you more.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Scuttini had no smile to wipe away as a sign of annoyance; he instead raised his chin again and looked at Denton the way a buffalo looks at something it is thinking of pounding into dust. ‘The signora has left the house, I hear.’

  From DiNapoli. ‘She has gone to London.’

  ‘She will come back?’

  ‘A friend is dying there.’

  Scuttini breathed heavily, as if he had something wrong with his lungs. He said, ‘You got yourself a friend in the police.’ Had DiNapoli told him about Gianaculo? Or did Gianaculo have a direct conduit of his own to Scuttini?

  ‘Not a friend. An—’ He didn’t know the word for ‘acquaintance’.

  ‘I have many friends in the police. The police are useful.’ Scuttini looked around the cluttered, ugly room as if he had lost something in it. His next question, however, made it clear what he was looking for: ‘What do you want?’ He made it sound brutal.

  ‘There is a marchese who wants to marry a young American girl.’

  ‘The Marchese Rocca-Scutare, yes. A fine match.’

  ‘You knew of this already?’

  Scuttini smiled. ‘This is a time of marriages. My grandson, the one you know, is in fact going to marry the youngest daughter of the Avocato Spinoso—the one who owns your house. The one who owned the house when it was being used for smuggling, and my grandson was left, but for you, to die there.’

  ‘Avocato Spinoso didn’t tell me he knew your grandson.’

  ‘He didn’t at that time.’

  ‘They are in love?’

  Scuttini grinned. ‘L’amore non c’è.’

  Denton searched his frog’s face for any sign that he knew that Denton had heard the words before. There was nothing. It would have been easy to believe that Scuttini knew what Palladino’s voice had said to him, even that Scuttini had prompted her to say the words, but there was nothing. As if Scuttini, too, were only an ignorant voice.

  Scuttini, apparently unaware of Denton�
��s interest, said, ‘The happy couple have never met. But it will be a good marriage. As I told the Avocato Spinoso, it will bind our two families together. He was so happy, he cried.’ Scuttini chuckled.

  Denton waited for the laughter to stop. He said, ‘I want you to tell the marchese to withdraw his proposal of marriage to the American girl.’

  Scuttini’s smile vanished. He folded his hands over his gut. He was not pleased, the posture seemed to say, but he was a reasonable man who would listen to sense. ‘You do not like him?’

  ‘He wants her money only.’

  ‘The Rocca-Scutares have many debts. Many, many debts. It is the duty of the marchese to pay those debts.’

  ‘The girl has not enough money.’

  ‘Her father is a millionaire! My friends in Rochester, New York, say he owns a big factory.’

  ‘If he owns it, he owns it with the banks. If he has a million dollars, he is not going to give them to his daughter. Look, Scuttini—the father is an American businessman; he has a hard head. Americans do not give big dowries. He would give his daughter a new house in Rochester and a few thousand dollars—not nearly enough to save the Rocca-Scutares.’

  Scuttini frowned. ‘He does not love the girl?’

  ‘He is an American businessman; he loves his business more. He will expect her husband to support her. Believe me, he will not pay the debts of the Rocca-Scutares.’

  Scuttini again looked around the room and came back to Denton’s face. They stared at each other for several seconds. Scuttini unclasped his hands and shifted his position on the sofa. He said in a lower voice, as if things were now confidential and they were getting serious, ‘The moneylenders have the Rocca-Scutares by the balls. You understand—balls? If the marchese does not marry well, the moneylenders will lose their money. And then I will lose money. You understand? That cannot be.’

  ‘I want the marriage stopped.’

  ‘Maybe the father will give her enough to pay five soldi on the lira.’