The Marshal and the Madwoman

by Magdalen Nabb

  It was one of his constant complaints that she always exaggerated.

  However, tonight they could go 'round the block' and stop near the Ponte Vecchio for an ice-cream. An ice-cream parlour must surely be open, even today, with all the tourists about in the centre.

  He was never to find out. The call came at supper-time, before he'd even had a chance to change. At first he had difficulty understanding, the voice was so quiet, almost casual in tone, so that the urgency didn't get across right away.

  'I asked for you personally and though I know I must be disturbing your meal I thought it best. We've met, but you maybe don't remember.'

  'Who's speaking?'

  'Gianfranco.'

  'Gianfranco? But I don't know anyone—'

  'Gianfranco Cini,' the voice rolled quietly on, 'but most people know me just as Franco. Don't you remember getting a black eye and coming into my bar—'

  'Ah, of course.' Now he could place the voice, as placid and solid as the big barman himself. 'I remember—'

  'Anyway, if you could come round or send somebody. She's been dead for a while, I think, and I don't know whether we did right or wrong breaking in. Anyway, what's done is done and we weren't to know. For all we knew, we could have been in time, what do you think?'

  What was he supposed to think? He had no idea what the man was rambling on about in tones as mild as if he'd been remarking on the weather.

  'Did you say somebody was dead?' Perhaps he'd heard wrongly.

  'She's dead all right, there's no doubt about that. Pippo's no doctor, of course, but even so . . . We've called the Misericordia but I said to Pippo, in a case like this they might not want to just take her away, there'll be formalities. To tell you the truth, in spite of the way things look—and I don't suppose there can be any doubt—it gave me a funny feeling thinking about her calling you last night, you know what I mean?'

  'Calling me? I—' But there was no hope of getting a word in. The quiet voice rolled on.

  'It's probably just one of those things but it gave me a queer feeling, even so. In any case, I thought you should be informed. I've seen to everything else . . .'

  In the end, the Marshal virtually hung up on him, having failed to interrupt the flow even by saying, 'I'll be round there in five minutes.'

  'Where are you going?' His wife came out of the kitchen as he was putting his jacket back on.

  'I've been called out.'

  'Whatever for?'

  'I haven't the faintest idea.'

  It was as quick to walk there but on second thoughts he drove in case there was anything further to be done. Further to what, he didn't know. What could the man have meant by talking of a call to him last night? He'd taken no call. Even then, he didn't remember at once the call that had been passed on to Headquarters, perhaps because nothing had come of it. There was no point in worrying about the problem now, anyway, since he'd find out everything when he got there. The only clear fact that had emerged from all the barman's ramblings was that she was dead.

  Only much later did he realize that he didn't ask himself, or, for that matter, the barman, who the dead woman was. It was as if everything that had happened in the last few days had been a preparation for this, as if he'd been expecting to hear that a madwoman, whose name he couldn't even remember, was now dead.

  CHAPTER 2

  It was the scene from the week before re-enacted with the same characters, the same crowd collected under the windows of the corner house staring up, and himself pushing his way through. There were subtle differences. The lighting, at sunset, was more subdued and so was the noise the crowd was making. This time he was in uniform, too, so the crowd parted to let him through. When he looked up at the madwoman's window, in place of the plump bare torso there was a thin man in a white shirt. From the sea of murmuring around him, the Marshal heard a woman's raucous voice call out:

  'Pippo! Open up, the Marshal's here.'

  The man in the white shirt looked down and then disappeared. The Marshal pushed on towards the street door which opened with a click as he reached it. The stairs were very steep and gloomy, lit only by a very weak bare light-bulb at each turn. A pretty, plump-cheeked young woman was standing in her doorway on the first-floor landing, and from behind her came a warmer light and a good smell of supper cooking. She withdrew very quickly when she saw the Marshal but, nevertheless, as the door was closing he heard her murmur faintly, 'Good evening.'

  He only nodded in the direction of the now closed door since he needed all his breath for the stairs as he trudged upwards, hat in hand.

  Pippo, the thin man in the white shirt, was waiting on the top landing. Before the Marshal had reached him he began:

  'It was Franco called you. I thought I'd better stay here with her.' He was a gangling fellow with a big nose and grey eyes that darted about, missing nothing.

  The breathless Marshal made no comment but followed him past the peeling black door into a dingy little flat.

  'She's in here.'

  A kitchen with barely enough room for an old-fashioned sink, an ancient gas cooker and a small table with a plastic cloth on it. A window, no more than a foot square, was wide open on a jumble of red tiles against the sunset and a bit of flowered curtaining was drawn across a small alcove to the left of the cooker. All this the Marshal took in without entering the room since his way was blocked by a body lying just inside the door. After a moment he stepped over it to get in. Pippo stayed where he was outside the doorway.

  'Who put this on her? You?' The head was covered with a faded tea-towel so that only a tuft of grey hair showed.

  'It was all I could find.'

  The Marshal removed it and looked at the face which was twisted up as if to look back at him. The eyes were slightly open and the mouth pulled to one side where there was a dark stain on the cheek. He frowned and bent over the body. It was lying on its side, half covered with the flowered overall, naked down the front, and he saw now that it hung open like that because there were no buttons on it. He remembered the plump nude figure, bursting with life and vibrant with anger, shaking a fat little fist at the neighbours. Now the fat arms were oddly stretched out behind as if their movement had swept the flowered overall back. The knees were bent and showed the same wine-dark stain as the right cheek. Each of the flaccid breasts carried a similar mark.

  The Marshal straightened up and passed a big hand over his face with a sigh. The wail of a siren wound down in the street outside.

  'Where did you find her?'

  'I hope I didn't do wrong . . .' The doorbell rang. 'That's the Misericordia . . .'

  'All right. Let them in.'

  Pippo went to press the button at the top of the stairs and came back.

  'So where did you find her? She wasn't lying here.'

  'She might have been alive. How was I to know?'

  'Where?'

  'With her head in the gas oven. That was why—'

  'The gas oven?'

  Four black-robed brothers of the Misericordia appeared behind Pippo.

  'Can you wait a minute?' The Marshal looked at the cooker and the open window, then turned and looked at the wine-dark stains on the pale flesh again. Then he made a sign to the waiting brothers. When they'd gone he said to Pippo, 'You'd better come in here.' And seeing the man's reluctance to step across the upturned face, he replaced the tea-towel.

  'I don't like ... It was different, you know, at first, thinking she might still be alive.

  'Sit down.' There was only one rickety formica chair.'You'll feel better in a minute.'

  Pippo was looking so white that the Marshal was afraid he might faint or vomit. 'Do you want a glass of water?'

  'No, no, nothing. I couldn't fancy . . .' As if everything in the room were contaminated with death.

  'Tell me what happened, right from the beginning.'

  'I wouldn't have come up here, I can tell you, if Franco hadn't said—' 'Never mind Franco for the moment.' Was this barman some sort of tribal chie
f round here that he seemed to make all the decisions? 'Just tell me, as simply as you can, the facts in the order that they happened. Nobody's saying you did wrong; I just need to know the full story.'

  Though nobody knew better than the Marshal that the one thing nobody ever did was to tell the full story about anything.

  'If it hadn't been that today's a holiday somebody would have been on to it sooner, but a lot of people were out at lunch-time, visiting relatives and what have you, and of course Franco only opened for an hour or two this morning, otherwise . . .'

  The Marshal perched himself on a corner of the table, hoping it would bear his weight. This was going to be a long job and it was evidently pointless trying to get this man to stick to the facts as interruptions generally tend to make people ramble even further from the point, intent as they always are on justifying themselves rather than giving a lucid account.

  'Anyway, nobody thought anything of it. The shops being closed and nothing doing in the square, it didn't seem odd that she didn't show herself all day because she never starts cleaning until towards evening. It takes her that way. She . . .' He glanced at the body. 'It's a rum business and no mistake. I'm not feeling too chipper, to tell you the truth. Where was I?'

  'She didn't show herself all day.'

  'No, well. . . We were out, too, as it happens, at my sister-in-law's. We must have got back about seven. The first thing the wife thought of when we got in was Clementina's supper.'

  'Clementina? Is that—?'

  'Clementina, yes! That's what we're on about, isn't it?'

  'I'm sorry, I didn't remember her name. Go on.'

  'We've always given her a bit of something—not that we're the only ones. We all do our bit round here. I'm not saying we're paragons of virtue. We're rough and ready, you know what I mean, but we look after our neighbours and I'm not boasting when I say my wife does more than most and I've never discouraged her.'

  On and on he went until the Marshal would willingly have canonized the whole family on the spot if only he'd get to the point. And all the time Pippo was talking he kept his eyes fixed on the table or on his hands, every now and then darting a sharp glance at the Marshal's face, though not directly in his eyes, to see how it was all going down.

  The Marshal's face, as always, was expressionless. His big, slightly bulging eyes missed nothing and betrayed nothing.

  'A bit of minestrone and some bread—she buys herself a bit of bread every day but when it's a holiday and two days' bread to buy together she always ends up without. Not that it's much, a bit of soup and bread—though there was a peach in the basket, too, now I think, I remember the wife saying—but somebody getting on in years doesn't want heavy food. So anyway, when it was ready she called across from the window but there was no answer.'

  Light dawned. The trouble about people who wanted to hide something was that they weren't necessarily hiding the thing you were looking for, and that always confused the issue. The reams of self-praise, the virtuous citizen's speech and those nervous glances at the Marshal's face all added up to the fact that the big fight last week had been between Clementina and Pippo's wife. In other words, Pippo had given the Marshal his black eye! Would they get on any faster if the Marshal told him that he knew and wouldn't dream of doing anything about it now? Not on your life! They'd be another half-hour with all the whys and wherefores of the pigeon problem. All he said was, 'Was the window open when your wife called out?'

  'Wide open. And the shutters. And you see how small this flat is. Even if she'd been asleep she'd have heard.'

  From what the Marshal remembered of the wife's raucous voice, this was certainly true.

  'What did you think when she didn't answer?'

  'I thought right away I'd better go and call Franco.'

  Of course! Not the Carabinieri or an ambulance or any other authority but Franco, who was evidently going to be a force to be reckoned with in this business, placid and kindly-looking though he was.

  'Franco came out with me and we stood under the window calling up. A few others came out and joined in but we couldn't make her hear—well, of course not, but we weren't to know. Our first thought was that she might be a bit under the weather after last night. You know how it is?'

  'No. What happened last night?'

  'The party. We had this supper out in the square. Franco organized it. The idea was that as everybody except us was away at the seaside we should do something to enjoy ourselves for the fifteenth. We decided on doing it on the evening of the fourteenth, Franco did, so we could all sleep it off this morning. Some people have got tomorrow off as well, I have myself, but not everybody, so that's what we did. Everybody paid so much a week for four weeks and last night we had a real slap-up do. Four courses. A lovely table set—candles and everything. Mimmo played the accordion and we danced a bit after. Clementina danced. She had the time of her life—' He stopped, remembering, and shot another glance at the lifeless Clementina.

  'She . . . she had a drop too much and her face was red ... we even managed to get her to lay off cleaning for a bit.' He had dropped his voice as though afraid she might defend herself against such slander. 'We got her dancing. The lads were reckoning to fight over her—all in good fun, you know, no harm meant.'

  'Didn't it sometimes go a bit too far?'

  'No, no, I wouldn't say that.'

  'Franco says so,' the Marshal said, quick to take advantage.

  'He does? Well, if anything, the youngsters get carried away at times, but they weren't at the supper, they have better things to do at their age than eat with the old folks. They didn't come roaring back on their mopeds until after midnight. They might have teased her a bit but nothing more than usual. I mean, for her to have called you in the middle of the night like that. . .'

  Again this call business that the famous Franco had mentioned on the phone. For the moment he kept quiet about his ignorance of this call. Better check up on it with his boys first.

  'Go on with what happened this evening. You thought she must have had a hangover, is that it?'

  'Something like that. Or even a stomach upset. She did herself well last night and she's not used to eating so much. Anyway, seeing as the window was open and the scaffolding there . . .'

  'You climbed in.'

  'Did I do wrong? What if she'd needed help? Franco said—'

  'No, no. You did quite right, I'm sure.'

  'Franco would have done it himself but he's on the heavy side and though I say it myself, I'm pretty fit. I can still kick a ball around. In fact—'

  'So you climbed up here. Tell me exactly what you saw.'

  'I looked in the living-room and then the bedroom—the bedroom door was open—and then—' 'When you looked in the bedroom was the bed made?'

  'No, it was rumpled.'

  'Did you touch it?'

  'No, I didn't even go in, seeing as she wasn't there.'

  That, at least, was something.

  'Would she leave her bed unmade all day, do you think?'

  'Clementina? You're joking!'

  'I'm asking.'

  'You don't know her!'

  'No. Then if she'd been alive this morning she'd have made her bed?'

  'I should say so! Oh ... I see now what you're getting at. You think that all this time ... I mean since last night

  'Go on.'

  'Where was I? Oh, I came in here then and I saw her. She was half lying, half kneeling there,' he pointed to the cooker, 'with her head inside and the gas turned on.'

  The Marshal looked at the small window.

  'Was that open?'

  'No, I opened it. That was the first thing I did because of the smell—no, I went and touched her first. She looked dead but I'm no expert and you never know. So then I opened the window—'

  'Didn't you turn off the gas?'

  He hesitated. 'You're right, the gas, I suppose I must have done . . .' He looked at the cooker as if to make sure. 'I must have done . . . and then I opened the window and came
back to get her head out of there. That was when I realized . . . she was going stiff. I've never had much to do with . . . you know what I mean. My mother died in the house but then you send for the woman that lays them out and until it's all been done you don't ... I came across a dog once—must have been run over—that was going stiff like that. I managed to drag her away from the oven. I suppose I was thinking of putting her on the bed but in the end I couldn't manage it with her being—anyway I covered her face up and then went to the front window and shouted to Franco to come up. I opened the door for him.'

  'Did he touch anything?'

  'Nothing at all. He said not to. As a matter of fact, he said I shouldn't have moved her but I—'

  'Don't worry.' The Marshal's opinion of Franco improved.

  'What if there'd been a chance, you see—'

  'You did your best. How long do you think you were in here before you went to call Franco?'

  'How long . . .? I couldn't tell you.'

  'Five minutes? An hour?'

  'Oh, nearer five minutes than an hour but it may have been ten.'

  'And you didn't feel sick? Wasn't the room full of gas?'

  'I suppose so.'

  'You suppose so?'

  'It did smell awful.'

  'But not enough to make you sick?'

  'Well, I opened the window.'

  'But it wasn't the first thing you thought of doing. You went to look at Clementina's body first so I imagine you could breathe all right.'