'You're married, you said?'
'Who, me?'
'Yes, you. You said your wife wasn't here.'
'What's that got to do with Fantechi? All right, I'm married. Satisfied?'
'Where's your wife? Does she go out to work?'
'She works here. There's the stairs to clean, for a start. That's not a man's job.'
'Plenty of porters do it.
'Not me.' A man's job was evidently sitting for hours behind the lodge window, reading the paper, listening to the radio, and keeping a sharp eye on the comings and goings in the building.
'I imagine she works for some of the residents, then, as well.'
'Two.'
'Including Fantechi?'
'Yes, if you want to know. Listen, what's he done? You're not saying but I'm nobody's fool and I've heard things, too. Nobody pulls the wool over my eyes.'
'What sort of things?'
'Eh?'
'What have you heard?'
'I'm not one to poke my nose into other people's business when there's no call, but if you really want to know I've heard he's been inside. His story was he'd been abroad on business, but the way I heard it he was away doing his little bit of time after a fraudulent bankruptcy. Once his first wife died—and she was a real lady, not like—Good evening, madam.'
The Marshal turned to see a smallish, elderly woman, thickly plastered with make-up, very expensively dressed, pulling a miniature dog on a leash. Her response to the porter's greeting was a very faint inclination of the head. Even so, he got up hurriedly and went across to push the lift button for her. She stood waiting without acknowledging this little service. When he came back he looked rather shamefaced and shrugged his shoulders. 'Top floor right, that one. Well, what should I care? She gives me a fat tip every month. It's all show. Comes from some old aristocratic family but most of the money's gone. Even so, you can take it from me, it's not money they can't do without, it's being kowtowed to. They can't stand being ignored or treated like ordinary human beings. I'm pretty sure she can't really afford the tip she gives me but she'd be willing to go without food if she had to so long as she's treated better than the rest of them in the building. You can imagine what she thinks of Fantechi's tarty wife, looks straight through her.'
'You don't think much of any of them, do you?'
'Why should I? If you knew what my wife has to put up with. Dressing up in a fancy apron and cap to serve tea and cheap biscuits to the silly old bag's friends every Thursday afternoon, not to mention putting up with the Fantechi woman who puts on all the airs and graces of a countess though she's nobody and like as not no better than she should be either. That sort can always get somebody to foot the bill as long as they have their looks, but she'd better watch out for herself when she loses them. Who'll put up with her then?' That was surely a remark from his wife's repertoire. 'As it is, they fight like cat and dog. The night before they left for the seaside they were at it. He'd been out on some jaunt with his business friends and they all came back here after midnight and carried the party on. When my wife went up in the morning there were plates and glasses strewn all over the shop and her ladyship was screaming the place down. He was doing his best to keep his end up.
'"What do we have a cleaner for? Let her see to it!"
'"It's not my maid'sjob to clear up after your disgusting friends!"
'"My maid"! And who paid for her maid, as she calls the wife? Not to mention the four fur coats and the fancy new villa at the seaside. The minute she didn't get what she wanted she'd threaten to leave him, and, between you and me, he'd be better off—Here he is. That's him.' The porter leaned forward a little as if to call out, but the Marshal put a heavy hand on his shoulder and quietened him.
Fantechi crossed the entrance hall without raising his eyes. He was wearing a white silk suit but it was as crumpled as if he'd slept in it. His grey hair was brushed but he hadn't shaved that day and his eyes were dazed. He pushed the button for the lift and stood with his back to the lodge waiting for it, his shoulders tense, his hands clenching and unclenching.
The Marshal and Di Nuccio emerged.
'Signor Fantechi?'
The Marshal had been sure he would make for the exit where he surely had a car parked, so that when Fantechi flung himself towards the staircase without even a glance at them, both he and Di Nuccio were surprised enough to allow him a head start. They recovered and ran after him, their footsteps almost soundless on the thick staircarpet. Di Nuccio went ahead of the Marshal, who was soon panting but not unduly worried. The man was unlikely to be armed and where could he go to earth except in his own flat, even if Di Nuccio didn't reach him first. Di Nuccio didn't reach him. Apart from the start he'd had, Fantechi had fear to help him. When the Marshal reached the third floor left Di Nuccio had his finger on the bell and was holding it there.
A dog began to bark and then to howl. A very large dog by the sound of it. They heard it crash against the inside of the door. The bell seemed as loud as a fire alarm but that and the howling of the dog brought no one out on the landing or stairs to see what was amiss. Apart from the old lady on the top floor, the building must have been empty. They were all on holiday. Di Nuccio stopped ringing and began hammering. They heard a window or a glass door slam and break inside the flat and the dog went pounding away still bellowing. The lift doors opened and the porter appeared.
'Open this door,' the Marshal told him.
'I shouldn't—'
'You've got the keys. Open it.' It looked a good deal too solid for the Marshal to want to try breaking it down.
'It's your responsibility . . .' But he produced his bunch of keys and let them in.
The dog came bounding out of the darkness in the shuttered flat and leapt at the Marshal's shoulders, almost bowling him over.
'Giulio! Down, boy! Giulio! Don't worry, he knows me.' The porter grabbed the great beast by the collar. 'Calm down, boy, calm down. It's all right, I've been feeding him and taking him out while they're away, so . . . quiet, Giulio! Good dog.'
But the other two had left him, striding forward to where one shaft of light sliced the darkness. It came from a bedroom on the left of a broad corridor. A french window was open. Broken glass lay on the floor around it and a muslin curtain was moving very slightly in the air.
They walked out on to the balcony overlooking a courtyard with a palm tree growing in the centre of it. Fantechi lay face down on the flags below with one arm trapped beneath his body and the other flung out as though to ward people away from his crushed head. But no one came near the body and the pool of blood around the head spread undisturbed in the evening light.
'I'll call an ambulance,' Di Nuccio said.
The Marshal didn't move. After a moment a faint click distracted him and he looked upwards to see the white powdered face of the old lady looking down from the highest window on the right. She was clutching the little dog close to her and when she saw what was below she retreated quickly and closed her shutters. The Marshal went on staring out. The porter appeared below near the body and, after bending over it, looked up and made a negative sign to indicate there was nothing to be done, but the Marshal didn't respond. He was staring down but without really seeing the body on the flags. He saw Clementina, not lying dead but dancing round and round in the square, her face red with food and wine, happy on the last night of her unhappy life. He saw Bruno, at times, too, bouncing to attention with a click of his well-polished heels.
'For God's sake, Bruno, don't do that behind my back! You'll give me a heart attack!'
'Sorry, sir.'
'And don't call me sir!'
Then another image came into his head, of someone he'd never seen at all. A woman lying, not face down like the man down there but on her back, her smoothly oiled and tanned body catching the last rays of the sun before it sank beyond the sea's horizon.
'Ah, Marshal! Good morning!'
'Look who's here!'
'Lovely day, isn't it?'
'Nic
e to see you again, Marshal. What will you have?'
The Marshal faced Franco across the bar. He hadn't expected such a welcome. Even people he'd never seen before were smiling in his direction over their breakfasts. Perhaps the grateful coolness of the misty September morning had something to do with the general cheerfulness. The city had begun to bustle again as if set going by clockwork, and the passing traffic added its noise and smells to those of the teeming bar. The butcher came in, fat and smiling in his white apron, having left his wife in charge while he grabbed a quick coffee, and he, too, greeted the Marshal and laid a big red hand on his shoulder.
'I hope your wife's not going to desert us completely now her own shops are open again.'
'I don't think she will. She enjoyed coming here. It's just that lately she's been spending all her spare time at the hospital.'
'With that youngster? Did he never come round?'
'Not yet.' And today his parents would arrive. As soon as the doctors had decided it might help if someone were there talking to him, in spite of his lack of response, the Marshal's wife had spent hours by his bedside. He knew she was glad to do it and felt better for no longer being at a loose end without her own boys. It's an ill wind . . .
'You must tell her,' the butcher said, 'that we'll always be glad to see her. I like a customer who understands what she's buying. Will you have a coffee with me?'
'Whatever the Marshal has is on me,' interrupted Franco, smiling and nodding his large head. 'Nobody's paying for his coffee—what about a drop of something in it?'
'No, no,' the Marshal said, 'just a coffee.'
When it came it tasted better than any coffee had for months.
The sky seemed higher and the filtered light was alive and shimmering. He could breathe better and the traffic, which everyone complained about all year round, was as cheerful as a brass band in the sunshine. Bruno must get better; it couldn't be otherwise.
'Something to chew?' suggested Franco, who was busy making toast.
'No, no. I'm fine as I am.'
His idea in calling here had been to give Franco a gentle hint about his after-hours activities being known about, but now he was here he didn't feel like striking a sour note that would spoil the atmosphere. He could always call some other time. Whether his wife would still come and shop down here he couldn't say, but he himself would surely drop in for a coffee at Franco's whenever he found himself in the neighbourhood. He liked these people, Franco and his big placid wife especially.
'Just fancy,' Franco was saying, 'you finding out about Clementina losing her husband and child in the flood and all these years she never said a word.'
The Marshal became aware of being surrounded by curious and expectant faces and realized what was expected of him in return for his coffee. He told them as much as he could, enough to make them feel they were in the know without touching on matters that were subjudice.
'It was quite something,' he finished up, 'learning what the flood really meant. I was still down in Sicily then—of course we saw it on the news but it didn't mean so much from a distance.'
'Just as well for you you weren't here,' the butcher said, laughing, 'though you'd have been all right where you are. The Pitti Palace was never under water because of having that slope up to it.'
'That's right,' piped up a tiny, paint-splashed man, 'we got our bread given out there. You'd have been all right.'
'Even so,' the Marshal said, 'it's amazing to me how you managed.'
'We hadn't much choice,' Franco said, 'and anyway it'd take more than half a million tons of mud to get this lot down.'
'It got Dino down!' the butcher said and everybody laughed.
"Who's Dino?'
'You haven't met him,' Franco explained, 'he was shut in August. He has the take-away roasting place just further down on the left.'
'I've never seen him cry before or since,' said the butcher, 'but he cried that day when he dug out that whole loin of beef—a beauty it was, I sold it him myself and he'd already paid me, that was what was the killer! He had it in his arms like it was his only child. "Not a slice offit," he kept saying, wading round with it in his Wellingtons, "Not a slice off it and roasted to perfection." In the end he flung it back in the mud and held his arms up to the sky, roaring at the Almighty, "I'll never forgive You for this!"'
They pulled out many similar anecdotes for his entertainment and the Marshal kept the sadder details of Clementina's story to himself, leaving them at last, reluctantly, to their noisy breakfast.
He had other calls to make. He'd already done the first job of the day by calling on Linda Rossi who was more astonished than pleased at their good fortune, coming as it did in the wake of so much tragedy.
'Then we don't have to leave? You're sure?'
'Quite sure. Nothing will happen for the time being. It'll take quite a long time for the Finance Police to untangle Fantechi's affairs. After that there'll be a lot of debts to be paid off and most, if not all of his property will be sold. As sitting tenants you'll have first refusal, so if you can possibly manage it. . . The price won't be high, they'll want a quick sale.'
'Perhaps my mother can help us ... I can't thank you enough. I felt so guilty about bothering you with our problems when you had so much on your mind. I hope you'll forgive us, we were desperate.'
'You did quite right. It's part of my job.'
And he'd said that with some satisfaction because it was part of his job, and if a certain prosecutor didn't see it that way he'd do better to work with the police. He'd be no loss to the Carabinieri. The police only had crime to worry about and wouldn't waste time on 'other people's little problems'.
Not that there'd been any more remarks of that sort. The man had been positively subdued at their last meeting. He'd asked after Bruno. There was no getting away from the fact that if the Marshal had been allowed to go about things the way they should have been gone about he'd have had the keys in his pocket that night. He must have realized, too, that but for the Marshal's attention to people's little problems the case wouldn't have been concluded and he himself free to leave for his holidays on schedule. 'The best of luck to him,' muttered the Marshal, 'and let's hope he comes back a reformed character.' He was walking back towards the Pitti, his car now being under repair. Thank God it was September.
The rest of his morning was spent on paperwork to do with Clementina's case. Its conclusion was a visit to the hospital. And if Bruno's parents had arrived, then that, too would have to be faced.
He found his wife sitting on a hard chair outside the door of Bruno's room. That could mean only one thing.
'They're here?'
'Go in. They're waiting for you.' Why should she look at him so oddly? Had they already said something? He wondered whether it wouldn't be better to wait here until they came out. It didn't seem proper, somehow, to talk to them with the boy lying there. But his wife said again, 'Go in.'
He opened the door.
Three pairs of eyes turned to look at him and he stopped dead on the threshold. A man and woman were seated on either side of the bed, and in between them Bruno sat bolt upright, grinning.
'Marshal!'
He walked slowly forward and held out his hand.
'So I've decided,' announced Bruno after a quarter of an hour during which no one else had managed to get a word in edge ways.
Even now, all the Marshal could manage to get out was, 'Well 'They'll send me to Rome first, won't they?'
'I . . .'
'You'll be able to give me a reference. What will they think about this scrape, though, that's what I've been wondering? I can't make up my mind whether it'll go against me or whether they'll give me a medal. What do you think?'
'I . . .'
'I wouldn't mind getting a medal. Anyway I was thinking about it all this morning while they were tapping and testing and telling me I was a phenomenon and I've made up my mind. No university for me. As soon as I'm back on my feet I'll apply for a commission!'
; The two parents looked helplessly at the Marshal but, as usual, Bruno had left him speechless.
The Marshal's next call was the last of the day. The last of the case. The rest was more paperwork.
'And how I'll get through it all I don't know . . .' The passenger sitting beside him in the van made no answer. He took up a good deal of room but he created no disturbance, sitting bolt upright and staring out at the traffic ahead, and the low sun. They turned in at the gates of the asylum and followed the signs to the administration block.
'Out you get,' the Marshal said, 'we're here.'
Mannucci seemed pleased to see the Marshal again and pushed aside a mountain of old files by way of welcome. He did give a puzzled glance at the Marshal's companion but made no comment.
'Sit down and tell me all.'
'There isn't much to tell that you won't already have seen in the papers. I must say, though, I was a bit surprised . . .' He tailed off, embarrassed at himself.'
'Surprised at what?'
'Well, I suppose I should have thought of it myself but I wondered at your not thinking, given the dates, of the flood having put Clementina in here. You're the expert. . .'
'That's right, I'm the expert. I wasn't here then, Marshal, but I have all the figures for the period if you're interested in seeing them. We've never had fewer admissions here than during the period following the flood. You don't believe me? I can show you.'
'No, no, if you say so . . .'
'I do say so, and I also say that our Clementina was already severely unbalanced to have reacted like she did, though I can't prove that to you, I'm just surmising.'
'You're right,' the Marshal said. 'I happen to know she was.'
'There's nothing like a physical disaster to bring people to their senses. There was a doctor used to work here who always said, "Drop any one of these patients in the middle of a desert or a jungle and leave them to it and they'll come to their senses within minutes and start fighting to stay alive." He was talking about short-term patients, of course, not the sort of people who are left in here now. No, it would never have crossed my mind to connect her with the flood once somebody had been good enough to remove the evidence. What I should have thought of was her legal rights —but not knowing there was any money to speak of. . . That sister of hers was a foolish woman to trust her husband like that, by the sound of it.'
The Marshal and the Madwoman Page 21