The Marshal and the Madwoman

by Magdalen Nabb

  The Marshal was surprised that she was only in her fifties.

  There was nothing else in the tin. The absence of a pension book was disturbing since it might mean she had another hiding-place that he hadn't managed to find. The lack of a rent book was less odd, though he very much doubted that the house was hers. There was such a desperate housing shortage in the city that thousands of people had rented houses with no contract or rent book, often at exorbitant rates. Whoever had a house to rent could call the tune, and even those who offered contracts often expected a bribe each time they were renewed. Not that crazy Clementina was a likely customer for that sort of landlord . . . unless it was true that she had cash hidden away, in which case someone who knew about it. . .

  'Well, I'm not convinced,' said the Marshal aloud in the silence of the gloomy kitchen.

  No, the rent book wasn't worrying him but something else was. Something else was missing. There might be another tin somewhere, or a drawer. He got up to check. Every house had a drawer where things accumulated. In poor houses it was always in the kitchen, in richer households it might be in the entrance hall. It was where you went to look when you needed a bit of string for a parcel— though you never found the scissors that should have been there—or a candle when the lights fused, last year's Christmas cards for the children to cut up or a pair of gloves that some visitor had left and never reclaimed. There were always keys in it that no longer fitted any lock, lost receipts for gas bills, spare plugs and tiny coils of wire. It was a drawer that was never difficult to find and the Marshal found it now at the first try by lifting the plastic cloth on the table, since there was no other piece of furniture with drawers in the room. He soon discovered a bit of candle and two or three postcards sent to her from the seaside, one of them from Franco, dated the previous summer. He rummaged further and found a few remnants of knitting wool, an empty chocolate box, a few screws and nails, the handle of something and a sheet of yellowed newspaper which had probably once lined the drawer but had got pushed to the back. But he didn't find what he was looking for. It was true that women sometimes had another drawer of this type in their bedrooms, where broken bits of cheap jewellery, unused presents of scent and old headscarfs accumulated along with precious letters and childhood prayerbooks. But he had already been through Clementina's bedroom drawers and found nothing.

  'Odd,' he muttered.

  The doorbell rang and he went to open it.

  'We understood you'd finished here . . .' said the first of the porters to appear.

  'We have. You can take her.'

  They went about their business. When they were struggling down again, the Marshal heard one of them shout crossly, 'Upright! Keep her upright or you'll not get round this corner, blast these old stairs!'

  He went on waiting patiently until someone turned up to affix the seals, then he put the house keys in his pocket and made his way down the gloomy staircase to go and pay a visit to Franco.

  CHAPTER 3

  The diffused yellow light of the street lamps and the sweaty warmth of the August night gave an indoor atmosphere to the tiny square which, as the Marshal's wife had said, was little more than a widening of the road. At the tables outside Franco's bar the men were gossiping or playing cards. Above their heads their wives leaned out of lighted windows, fanning themselves with handkerchiefs, smoking, exchanging bits of news or complaining about the humidity. Every television in every house was blaring out the same film soundtrack. Franco himself was standing in his doorway, unshaven, hands resting comfortably on his paunch. The Marshal squeezed between the tables.

  'I thought you'd be coming,' the big barman said. 'Come inside and sit down.'

  His television was on the loudest of all since it was turned to face the street so that the men could watch it from outside.

  The Marshal sat himself down at the table where he had once nursed his black eye and Franco went behind the bar to get two glasses and a cold bottle from the fridge under the counter. He held the bottle up and said something the Marshal couldn't possibly hear over the film music which was now giving way to gunfire. However, seeing the label on the bottle, Pinot Grigio, he nodded. It was fortunate that once the bottle was open and on the table Franco smiled and said, 'I'll turn the sound down a bit so we can talk.'

  A howl of protest went up outside as the sound diminished but Franco went out and raised a hand.

  'Just be patient a minute, I have to talk to the Marshal.' The protests died down. He ran the square as though it were a school. The Marshal couldn't help admiring him for it, but at the same time he realized that he was only going to find out what Franco decided he should find out, and that if the big barman should take it into his head to protect someone there'd be little or nothing he could do about it. It remained to be seen whether Franco was disposed to be helpful.

  'I'd turn it off altogether,' the barman remarked, sitting down and filling their glasses, 'but it's better to let them go on watching the film. We want to hear each other but we don't need everybody else listening in.'

  'True.'

  'Your health.'

  'And yours.'

  'So, how's it going?'

  The Marshal's eyes opened wide as he drank from the misted glass. Naturally, Franco would ask the questions! And he was by no means put out when he didn't get an answer. His mild voice just rolled calmly on.

  'I didn't touch anything up there myself. I didn't even look at her. I thought it would be a mistake to create unnecessary confusion, leave more fingerprints everywhere, and so on.'

  'Fingerprints?'

  'This is between ourselves, you understand. Don't think I'm telling you your business, but I know the people round here and if you take my advice you'll let them go on thinking it was suicide for the time being. I haven't said anything.' He winked confidentially. 'I think you'll agree it's best. . .'

  The Marshal was too astonished to sort out the questions that were tumbling through his head and he was wise enough to keep quiet. If Franco hadn't even looked at her—and it was absurd to imagine that he knew enough about forensic science, anyway . . . What did he know? The Marshal would not have been too surprised if Franco had disposed of the whole case there and then, plucking a murderer out from among his customers and serving him up as simply as he had served the bottle of cool white wine.

  'I don't need to tell you that I'll do anything I can to help. Not to put too fine a point on it, I feel a bit guilty, you know. Of course, the wife's quite right in saying that nobody would have done otherwise—after all, she was crazy, not so crazy as some people might think, but when it comes to things like that—Do you know, she once tried to telephone the Pope? She was in here one Sunday morning and she got all het up about something he'd said in his speech on the telly and if she'd been able to find the number there'd have been no stopping her. She's done that sort of thing before, so you can understand why I didn't want her bothering you at that time of night, besides which she encouraged kids to climb up the scaffolding by behaving the way she did—I mean, chucking buckets of water out at them only made it more fun. You can understand that, I'm sure.'

  Up to now, the Marshal hadn't understood a word but his face didn't show it and he took another draught of wine before deciding that perhaps the best place to start might be a bit further back in the story.

  'Did you know Clementina well? Has she always lived here?'

  'No, no. She's not from round here. Other side of the river, Santa Croce. She's not been here all that long.'

  'I see. A pity.'

  'Ten years at the most.'

  'As little as that?'

  'Might only be nine and a half but ten at the most. My family now, we've been here, in this same building, for a hundred and thirty-eight years. People move about more these days. War's often to blame. We haven't budged since the 1848 revolution, but then in the last war we were lucky and in the flood, too—lost all our stock, of course, but we live on the floor above and it didn't reach us. I remember—'

&nb
sp; 'Yesterday,' interrupted the Marshal firmly—at the back of his mind was the memory of a call to a disturbance referred to Headquarters but he wanted to take things one at a time. 'Yesterday, did you see Clementina? Was she much as usual?'

  'Yes and no—I'll explain in a minute. Yesterday, you see, we had our big "do" on.'

  'I've heard about that.'

  'Did Pippo tell you? Well, we were busy all day getting ready for it, especially as my wife did most of the cooking. Clementina was hanging around here all day, as excited as a kiddie. She liked eating and she stuffed so much down so fast it's a wonder she wasn't ill. I've never seen her so cheerful as she was last night when her cheeks were full to bursting with ravioli.'

  The Marshal remembered the fridge with one egg and a slice of sausage. 'I suppose she didn't often get a really good meal.'

  'Not a meal like last night's, no. But she always had enough to eat. She hadn't a penny—well, you've been up there so you've seen how she lived, but everybody did their bit and I don't think a day passed without her getting a dish of something from her neighbours. In fact, the wife was making up a nice plate of stuff left over from last night for her when Pippo came for me to say she wasn't answering.'

  Even so, to be dependent on whatever somebody thought to give you . . . The Marshal was feeling the effects of missing supper, despite his having eaten too much rabbit at lunch.

  'And if it comes to that,' Franco went on, 'Pippo's wife had prepared a bit of something for her, as well, and that's how they came to notice—'

  'I know,' the Marshal said, 'he told me.'

  'Well, there it is. We did our best. She had a good blow-out on the last night of her life. I'm pleased about that, though, as I said, I'm not happy about that business of her phoning you.'

  'Tell me about this phone call.'

  'You must know all about it already, they'll have told you at your Station, of course.'

  'Of course. But tell me your end of it.'

  'Well, it must have been towards three in the morning ... or maybe only two-thirty, say two-thirty.'

  'You went on as late as that?'

  'Well, yes and no ... It had finished really, the party, but there were a few of the lads hanging about afterwards and Clementina's one who ... the women had all gone home to bed long since but she was still here.'

  'With all the men?'

  'You must remember she wasn't right in the head. When they made a grab for her she'd think it was serious, and of course they encouraged her to. They went a bit far at times but she was almost always the one to start it. She liked attention.'

  'And were they the people who were tormenting her by climbing up the scaffolding as Pippo said—did that happen last night?'

  'That happened almost every night but it was the youngsters, not the men. Ever since that scaffolding's been there...'

  'How come it's there in August?'

  'You tell me. They're supposed to be doing the facade of the building by order of the town hall since there were dangerous great lumps falling off it, but if you ask me there's a shortage of money there. The scaffolding was put up but the work was never started, and in the meantime Clementina's torn the netting away to feed her pigeons.'

  'Is it true she threw buckets of water at the boys who climbed up?'

  'Many a time. I used to go out and tell her, "Shut your windows and go to bed and they'll soon go away." But after two minutes she'd open up and start shouting and throwing water again. And what was the use of shouting at the kids? They knew as well as I did that she enjoyed it.'

  'Not very pleasant for the people underneath her.'

  'You're right there. And of course with their having . . .'

  'What?'

  'Nothing. Poor things. He studies, you know, and the noise must often have annoyed him. They're a nice respectable young couple.'

  'Yes. Well, if this racket went on every night, how is it that last night Clementina wanted to send for me?'

  'I'm coming to that. We were closing up here, as I said. The lights were still on in here and the outside shutter was half down, if I remember rightly. When I went outside to roll it right down there was a racket going on under her house fit to wake the dead, and one of the kids—I couldn't see who it was—was swinging on the scaffolding. I shouted across to them to pack it in, that we all wanted to get some sleep. I waited until the lad had climbed down and everything was quiet and then I came in. That's why I interrupted when she tried to phone you. Things had been perfectly quiet for a good half-hour when she came banging at my shutter saying she wanted to call the Carabinieri. You see what I mean?'

  The Marshal was beginning to see but he wasn't sure whether things might not get more difficult if he said so. He stared into his glass for so long, wondering what line to take that Franco picked up the bottle and filled it for him. When that didn't rouse him, he repeated, 'You do understand? She'd drunk a fair bit, a lot, in fact, for her. I remember how red her face was when she was dancing. She was a bit drunk—well, why not, once in a while? She enjoyed herself. But things had been quiet for over half an hour. I let her in under the shutter and I took a look outside at the same time. There wasn't a soul in sight. Even so, she grabbed the phone, shouting that someone was trying to get into her house. I tried to reason with her but the others who were still here were egging her on as they always did when she started anything like that. One fellow even went so far as to find your number for her. Well, you know how it went after that. Whoever answered told her to ring Borgo Ognissanti. I said I'd do it for her and took the receiver from her. She didn't notice that I didn't make the call because she was by the door shouting at whoever she thought was out there to fuck off and leave her alone. She swore a lot but there was no harm in it, it was just her way.'

  'Hm.'

  'I'd a job to get her to go home again because she was convinced that you'd be turning up. In the end I told her I'd wait for you and went up to the flat with her. I had a good look round every room to convince her there was no one there and by the time I left she'd calmed down. I'm sorry about what happened, but even now I can't think what more I could have done. When somebody's as crazy as Clementina was you've no way of knowing when, for once, there's something really wrong. How could I have known that something must have happened to really frighten her? She must have been upset and I just thought she was drunk. More than likely she was a bit of both. You understand?'

  'I understand.'

  'Franco!'

  One of the card-players was looking in at the door, his eyebrows raised in a question.

  The big barman didn't move from his chair, only lifted a plump finger and gave the slightest negative sign with it. The man in the doorway vanished. The Marshal read both question and answer but he had made his mind up by this time to notice nothing. If he got on the wrong side of Franco he would never get to the bottom of this case. He was aware of Franco's glance, checking to see if he'd noticed anything, but all he did was to take sip of wine, gazing out at the night through the open door, his face blank. Among the group of card-players, voices were raised in some brief, friendly argument. A woman's voice called out from a high window, 'I'm off to bed...'

  The film on TV was drawing to a close to judge from the music. Everything in the piazza had returned to the normal rhythm of a summer night and it was difficult to believe that anything dramatic could have happened there, that any outsider could have penetrated this closed little world and done violence to it. This was a world where tragedies were small and familiar; the wail of the ambulance when somebody's mother had a stroke, then the daily slog to the hospital until it was all over. At worst, a heartbroken mother whose son had been caught for some petty crime. Even Clementina's madness had been an accepted daily fact of life. They made soup for her, teased her, bawled her out when she went too far. In all the years he'd been in Florence nobody had ever called him to intervene here. They settled their own differences or Franco settled their differences for them. That was how it had always gone on and how i
t would continue to go on. The killing of Clementina was an anomaly. It had to have been done by an outsider, and whoever had done it had been clever enough or intuitive enough to choose the gas oven as something appropriate to this district, though not efficient enough to have made a convincing job of it. Perhaps he hadn't cared that much, or had assumed that nobody else would care that much. A crazy old woman, poor and harmless, whom nobody would miss.

  'I'll miss her, in a way,' said Franco, staring out at the night like the Marshal, 'though she was a pest at times. She was part of things, you know? I keep expecting her to appear out there with her brush . . .'

  Nobody appeared out there.

  'Seven of clubs.'—'Mine.'—'Your deal' . . .

  'She once cracked the council refuse collector over the head with it.'

  'What?'

  'She used to go for people with her brush, especially if they got in the way of her cleaning. She was fanatical about it.'

  'My wife mentioned that, said she swept the whole square.'

  'Swept it? She washed and polished it. She was forever down on her hands and knees. And I've seen her go out of a shop and take her receipt straight to the skips, struggling away to lift up those high lids—she was only small—despite her little bag of shopping and the inevitable sweeping brush that was always under her arm. What a case she was. She got much worse when it started going dark, sweeping and mopping as though her life depended on it.'

  'Franco?' A woman appeared from somewhere at the back of the room. She was as large as Franco and just as placid and smiling. A big brooch decorated her dress on her ample breast and she was smoking a cigarette.

  'My wife, Pina,' Franco said. Evidently there was no need for him to tell her who the Marshal was.

  'Eeh, poor creature . . .'

  The Marshal took this to be a comment on Clementina rather than a greeting to himself.

  'I'll sit down a minute,' she went on with a sigh, 'my feet are swollen. The doctor says I should walk more but I don't know where he thinks I'm supposed to walk to or how I'm to find the time.' Her beringed fingers slapped a packet of cigarettes and a plastic lighter down on the formica table and she sank on to a chair that looked far too fragile for her. Franco started to get up.