Tuscan Termination

by Margaret Moore

  “It’s no good Robin. I’ll tell you what really happened after Ettore was knocked to the ground by a blow with a shovel, shall I?” She shrugged her shoulders and remained silent.

  “I think you had heard some noise and got out of the car to see what was going on. I think you saw Nigel go into the house with a bleeding nose, and I know you heard what Ettore shouted at him. You were meant to hear it. Then you heard the branch break under Salvatore’s feet, yes it was Salvatore who had come to do a bit of housebreaking, and you saw what happened. He defended himself from Ettore with the spade and struck him a hefty blow. Ettore fell to the ground, but he was not dead, nor would he have died from that wound. You were standing in the shadows at the side of the house, quite near to the pool really. As Salvatore finished cleaning the spade, you came out from the bushes by the garage. He says he saw a man in a dark suit, coming down the steps to the pool and he thought it was Nigel, so he made off as fast as he could. He was right, wasn’t he? It was a man, but it wasn’t Nigel. It was you. You went down to the pool and saw Ettore, lying there groaning. He was stunned and very weak, but he saw you and when you bent over him, he said “Testa di cazzo” to you. You saw it was the perfect opportunity to rid yourself of a man who had something on you and could use it whenever he wished. So you pulled him to the edge of the pool and tipped him in. It only took a minute. It was easy for you; you are strong, much stronger than Nigel. Nigel was older than you and had just about exhausted his energies. He had been kicked hard in the face and his nose was bleeding copiously. While he was up at the house, in the kitchen, cleaning his jacket and trying to stop the flow of blood with a cotton wool plug, you were at the pool killing Ettore. Ettore, the man who had shouted to Nigel “I don’t think you’ll do that.” He meant, tell the police about his presence there in your house. He said, “Your wife wouldn’t like it.” Nigel didn’t know the meaning of those words but you did. He had shouted them for you to hear. He had bellowed them in fact. Every witness heard them. You knew what he meant. It was a warning He wanted you to quieten Nigel down, because if you didn’t, he was going to tell Nigel about this,” with a flourish he tipped the photograph on the table. Robin began to weep.

  “After you killed Ettore, you rushed back to the car and were there when Nigel arrived from the house. Did he ask you what Ettore meant, I wonder?” He paused, but Robin refused to look at him. “Ettore was bi-sexual, and I’m sure that someone like you must have fascinated him. Nigel was often away, and Ettore was an attractive young man. You thought no one would ever know. But I think that if Nigel had known, he would have thrown you out, so when you killed Ettore you were trying to save yourself, and your life with Nigel. One word and the whole tissue of lies would fall apart, you would be revealed to Nigel as unfaithful, and even worse, unfaithful to him with the man he hated. You would have been revealed to the world as a transsexual, something you had carefully hidden for years, behind a mask of femininity.” He paused again, then added, “I am seeing Nigel tomorrow, his testimony will, no doubt, be conclusive. I will ask you to make a statement now and sign it. Robin Pierce, I arrest you for the murder of Ettore Fagiolo…

  He was tired. Sometimes he found his work so sordid, this delving into other people’s sex lives, their intimacies laid bare, picked over, exposed to public censure. This case would be like that. People would read their newspapers with glee, gloating over every scabrous detail that earnest journalists would lay before them like prime cuts of meat in the butcher’s window, all in the pursuit of truth. The truth will out, but he felt pity for the broken creature he had arrested. She/he would be exposed like a circus freak. The first murder had precipitated dementia and another death had been the result. We are all responsible for our actions, so now Robin Pierce would pay the price.

  He phoned Hilary, “It’s over. I’ll tell you everything, later.”

  “Amanda phoned, she’s staying overnight with her friends. Have you been bribing her?”

  “No, but I’ll remember to do so in the future. I’ll come then.”

  He opened the case file, picked out the photo of Marco and put it through the shredder. The photo of Robin in her red wig he returned to its envelope and then closed the folder and locked it in the drawer. He turned out the light, locked the door and left.

  During the early hours of the next morning, the earth rumbled and like a duck shaking water from its feathers, tried to shake the parasites from its back. It was only a half-hearted attempt, and a few roof tiles were dislodged, a few cracks appeared on pristine walls, and a little loose plaster fell from old houses and smashed in the street below. Many people spent the rest of the night in their cars as a precaution, but Hilary and Ruggero didn’t even feel it.

  The sun entered the window at its usual time, and Hilary opened the shutters as she always did, and looked out on the same world as always. She looked down at the pool, and thought it seemed different today. There was something…She went back to the bedside table for her long distance glasses, put them on, and brought it into focus.

  “My God!” she cried

  “What is it?” Ruggero sat up in bed, alarmed.

  “The pool, it’s cracked, all the water is leaking out.”

  He jumped out of bed and came to stand beside her. They looked down at it. There was an ample, and widening crack in the swimming pool and as the water seeped out, it was causing subsidence, so that the pool itself was moving and seemed about to start an inevitable slide into the valley. A stream of muddy earth flowed down below it, and was still moving.

  “It’s going down. The whole thing is going to slide down the hill. The supporting wall must have given way. That’s Ettore’s shoddy work for you.”

  They stood together and watched fascinated as half the pool broke away from its place and began to slide down into the valley. At the same time, a wave of water burst from the pool and at great speed seemed to push the broken-off section along, so that it bounced and boomed its way rapidly down to the valley floor, smashing into pieces as it hit the rocks at the bottom, near the stream. The remaining piece was moving slightly and would inevitably follow on.

  “Incredible!” cried Ruggero. “Absolutely unbelievable!”

  Other windows had been opened and heads appeared, necks craning to see. There was a kind of excited babble, which rose up and increased in volume, culminating in a great “Ah” as the pool smashed.

  “A fitting end, wouldn’t you say,” commented Ruggero.

  “I never did like it, anyway,” said Hilary.

  END.