LXVI
Maione was waiting for Ricciardi outside the front entrance of police headquarters, in the shade of the stone arch. Upon his return from Vomero he was sure he would find him in his office, as they’d agreed the previous day, and he was already starting to worry for no particular reason when he spotted the commissario in the distance, walking toward him with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground as usual; but to the brigadier’s empathetic gaze it was clear that something wasn’t right.
He walked to meet him, climbing a few dozen yards up the narrow vicolo from the building’s entrance.
“Commissa’, are you all right? I was just starting to wonder where you were, you told me that you were going to go talk to Rispoli first thing and then you’d come to the office. But here they tell me that they haven’t seen you since yesterday. Did something happen?”
Ricciardi said nothing, as if preoccupied, his face creased with pain.
“Has something happened to Signora Rosa, Commissa’? When could it have happened? I just phoned over to the hospital a few minutes ago, because when I heard you weren’t here I thought she might have taken a turn for the worse. But I talked to Dr. Modo and he told me that her condition is stable.”
At the mention of Rosa’s name, Ricciardi seemed to snap out of it.
“Ah, you already called over? I was planning to do that myself, as soon as I got back to the office. No, nothing’s wrong. Everything’s normal. Come on, let’s get upstairs; we need to make arrangements for the last interview we need to conduct, so we can close out this investigation.”
“No, Commissa’. I think we’re going to have revise our plans. A call came in from Incurabili Hospital, where they’ve completed the autopsy on poor Coviello, which by the way confirms in every aspect what we already know about his death. They tell me that there’s someone claiming the body to give it a funeral.”
Ricciardi stared at Maione, a long stony gaze.
“Well, that’s something at least. Okay, let’s get over to Incurabili.”
Incurabili—“Incurables”—was the largest hospital in the city. Its name was in apparent contradiction with its mission, but only because the institution’s full name, St. Mary of the People of the Incurables, was habitually abbreviated, and this because it, in turn, was at odds with the frenetic activity that went on there.
Ricciardi and Maione made their way across the atrium, threading carefully through the crowd of physicians, nurses, family members, and those patients well enough to walk on their own two feet. They passed the entrance to the church on their right, from which emerged the sound of mass, and emerged into an inner courtyard; they ignored the broad staircase leading up to the wards and the monumental old pharmacy, and instead proceeded on toward the rear of the building, where the morgue was located.
Just as they were about to step out from the courtyard, they were cordially greeted by the young physician they’d first met in Coviello’s workshop: “Good afternoon, Commissario, greetings, Brigadie’. So they informed you that we were done with your hanged man, right?”
Ricciardi took immediate issue with the man’s glib tone and offhanded manner toward the deceased; once again, he gained renewed appreciation for the merciful respect for the dead that Bruno Modo invariably displayed. The words that the ghostly image of the goldsmith had uttered at the scene of his death echoed clearly in his ears: the bottom of your heart.
“What is your name, Doctor?”
The physician replied in a haughty voice: “Guglielmo Franzi, Commissario.”
“So I would guess that you prefer to be called Dr. Guglielmo Franzi, don’t you?”
The young man blinked behind the round lenses of his spectacles: “I don’t follow you, Commissario. What are you saying?”
Ricciardi snapped back: “The person you refer to as “our hanged man,” sir, had a first and last name, you know? He was called Nicola Coviello. He had a mother, a poor demented old woman who’s now all alone in the world, an apprentice that he was teaching a trade, as well as an array of feelings, loves, interests, and ideas. I’d be much obliged, if our professional paths chance to cross again, if you’d refer to the deceased by their first and last names.”
The young doctor blushed.
“You’re absolutely right, Commissario. I beg your pardon. The corpse . . . er, Signor Coviello, as seemed to be the case on a preliminary investigation, died as a result of strangulation caused by the rope after a certain period of . . . after he . . . after he came to be suspended from the rafter. The groove on his neck showed the marks of the rope, which unfortunately means that a fair amount of time had passed. I would therefore confirm the presumable time of death.”
Maione asked: “And there are no signs of struggle, correct?”
“No, Brigadier. In fact, from the marks on the hands and the traces of hemp fiber corresponding to the rope, it is evident that he hauled himself up, without any external support. He must have been incredibly strong. Otherwise, he was healthy, no signs of any advanced-stage diseases: this wasn’t done to avoid further suffering, in other words.”
But he was suffering, Ricciardi thought to himself. He was suffering, and how. Regrets, despair. Perhaps remorse.
“Thank you, Doctor. There’s nothing else, is there?”
“Actually, Commissario, yes, there is. I had that information conveyed over the telephone. As you know, there’s a person who has claimed the dead . . . that is, the remains of the deceased. They say they won’t leave until they can make arrangements for a funeral and decent burial. I explained that we would have to await instructions from police headquarters, but . . .”
Ricciardi nodded: “Yes. I did know that, Doctor. We’ll take care of it. Where is this person?”
The doctor pointed toward the rear of the courtyard: “Back there, by the entrance to the morgue itself. There’s a bench, in the shade of the porch roof.”
“Fine. Thanks again, and have a good afternoon.”
Maione touched his visor in a salute, and followed Ricciardi, whispering: “Nice work, Commissa’, you told him what’s what, this young punk of a doctor. He’s going to have a lot more work to do before he can become like Dr. Modo.”
“Doctors as bad as Bruno are born, not made. Let’s go, Raffaele. Let’s try to understand just when Coviello started to die.”
On the bench that the doctor had pointed out to them was a single person: a woman dressed in black, skinny, with gloved hands clutching at a purse in her lap. She wore a hat, likewise black, with a dark veil that covered her face, making her unrecognizable.
Ricciardi walked over, followed by Maione, and came to a halt before her. The heat was terrible and the crickets were chirping loudly in the trees.
The commissario made a slight bow: “Buonasera, Signora Iovine.”
LXVII
All three of them sat down on the bench, Maione next to Ricciardi and Ricciardi next to the widow Iovine. The brigadier kept glancing at the woman’s veiled profile, practically impossible to see except for the sharp, narrow nose, which projected slightly beyond the silhouette of the commissario’s own, as if it were a shadow. From the first time he’d laid eyes on her, he’d never been able to rid himself of a deep uneasiness: that skinny figure dressed in black, sitting stiffly outside the morgue, alone, reminded him of death itself.
Without turning to look at her, Ricciardi began speaking in a low voice, little more than a whisper: “I should have figured it out right away. All the evidence was there, you know; and I doubt that either you or he made any special effort to conceal it. But you don’t see where you don’t look, and I was distracted by . . . by a number of things. Then at last I saw.”
The woman didn’t seem to be listening. She hadn’t moved by so much as an inch, she hardly appeared to be breathing in the indifferent chorus of the crickets’ chirping.
“The first clue was the
most obvious of all. He’d been the last person to see Iovine alive. We listened to what he told us: the shadow in the dark, a gigantic man; but the last person to see the victim alive is always the murderer. He’s the one with the strongest interest in shifting suspicion onto someone else, to give himself time. Not to get away with it, but just get a little more time. The time he needs to finish his work. He knew that suspicion on the other men, the doctor’s son, the gangster with the dead wife, would eventually dissolve. He just wanted a little more time.”
Someone slammed a window shut high above them. Ricciardi continued: “And he himself, when we questioned him a second time, said that he had recommended a style of ring that would go perfectly on slender fingers like yours. And yet, by his and your own admission, he’d never seen you: you told us that you’d learned his name from some of your girlfriends and that then you’d told your husband about him. How could he have known what your fingers were like? Your husband couldn’t have told him, he’d been very brusque, they’d hardly talked at all. And then, when we went to his home, his mother, a poor old woman with a wandering mind, told us that Nicola’s girlfriend from many years ago had returned; a woman who had appeared one night, and stuck her face through the door of the workshop with an enigmatic phrase about steamships departing. The same words that he carved into his workbench, the place where he spent his whole life waiting for you, Signora. Waiting for you to come back. The grace for which he completed the ex-voto to the Virgin Mary, the Madonna whose name you bear.”
Maione sat there, as expressionless as a Buddha in a policeman’s uniform, but deep inside a storm was raging. Ricciardi had explained his hypothesis to him before, but now to hear it in detail, just a few yards from the morgue where the poor goldsmith’s body lay emptied of its innards, and in the presence of that lady in black who could easily have been a mannequin, was pushing him to the edge of madness.
Ricciardi went on: “And it was there, and only there, that I understood. When I went to see the heart in flames, devoured by the fire of an eternal love and an eternal pain, the solid gold heart that probably represents the entire fortune accumulated over years of highly respected craftsmanship. The heart at the bottom of which, engraved with enchanting skill, is your name, Signora. Your name, like a despairing scream. Your name, like a last misbegotten thought.”
The crickets fell silent, as if they’d been listening, suddenly attentive. To the bewildered Maione, that sign seemed at once terrible and simultaneously completely natural.
The commissario said, grimly: “It was Nicola Coviello who threw your husband out the window. It was Nicola Coviello, with his incredibly powerful and skilled hands, who picked him up by his belt and the collar of his shirt and hurled him over the windowsill, easily and promptly. It was Nicola Coviello who put an end to your husband’s life, obeying an order from you, whether explicit or implicit. I can’t prove it and I’m not really interested in doing so; for that matter, given the larger context, it doesn’t really matter all that much to our investigation. But I’m sure of it. I just don’t know what your motivations were. I want to know. And you must tell me. For justice’s sake. To do him justice.”
Once Ricciardi was done speaking, there was an extended silence. Maione shot quick glances at the two backlit profiles, carved and motionless, both oddly sharp, the nose jutting forward, almost as if they were the same person: the commissario with a lock of hair dangling over his forehead, his green eyes chasing after his thoughts in the empty air; the woman in black, straight-backed, skinny and still, her gloved hands clutching the handle of her handbag. Time hung over the edge of an abyss that could have been the inferno, full of the dead screaming in the atrocious heat of eternal flames.
Then Signora Iovine moved her hands.
She raised them to the veil that she lifted over her hat, resting it on the brim and uncovering her face.
Maione had noticed how hard her features were the first time he’d met her; a hardness that had crumbled slightly only when she spoke of her son. This time, the face of Maria Carmela Iovine del Castello was completely devoid of any expression; the wrinkles around her mouth and the corners of her eyes seemed to have been carved in marble. Like Ricciardi, she too was staring into the middle distance, almost as if they were both watching the same performance.
The brigadier felt his heartbeat slowing, but now his stomach was tied in knots; he had an expectant feeling, like when you see lightning and are waiting to hear the thunder.
The woman opened her mouth and then shut it again, twice, in search of the right words.
Then she spoke.
LXVIII
We used to go watch the steamships depart. We were little more than children, you know? And we’d go watch people leave for America.
In our neighborhood that was how we spent time together, as if it were an obvious, ordinary thing. A matter of age, proximity, friendships uniting families: a little boy and a little girl, first playing on the ground among the hens pecking up and down the vicolo, then walking together in the street, and finally sharing a life together. Nicola and I were destined for each other. That’s what everyone thought, and he thought so too. Not me, though. I wanted more.
He would have left for America. Not me, I’d never have left. I thought that to leave meant to accept defeat, and I think the same thing now. Still, I’d go down with him to watch the steamships departing. Until the day that I myself departed.
I never believed that he’d wait for me. I went to live in a town in the provinces, pretty far away, with an aunt who couldn’t have children, married to a rich businessman. A man with lots of money. That was where I met Rosario, a few years later.
My aunt had sent me to school. She treated me like a doll, she played at being my mother, she dressed me, fed me, and sent me off to study; but I wasn’t playing. Everything, every exam, every new acquaintance only helped me to improve. I wanted to be rich, respected, a fine lady. I wanted to be happy.
Rosario wasn’t an aristocrat, he wasn’t a prince, but he was ambitious and he came from a good family. And then he was so intelligent, the smartest person I’d ever met. He had a spectacular memory, he only needed to read a sentence once and he’d remember it forever. He could have done anything he set his mind to, and he would have been successful without even trying. But there was only one thing he wanted: he wanted to become a doctor.
He was a good man. I believe that he was a good man precisely because he was so intelligent. He said that wrongdoing makes no sense, it’s incomprehensible because it’s counterproductive. Because it hurts people, for no good reason.
I trusted him. Things were going well, he was climbing the ladder step by step; I was working to help him, I established a network of relationships. You know, Commissario, to start a great career, it’s not enough to be excellent, you also have to make friends, establish relationships. Sniff the wind, and then move in the right direction. I’m good at that. Very good.
So Rosario worked as a scientist and a physician: the things he knew how to do. And he did them very well indeed, he became a sort of guiding light for the entire discipline. And I became the favorite girlfriend of the wives of the powerful, politicians, business tycoons. Gynecology necessarily works through a network of women: and you’d never guess the extent to which women control their men.
When Rosario became director of the chair of gynecology, here in the city, I chose to move someplace other than the old quarter. My parents were dead by then, and I was a different person myself. I couldn’t hope to be happy where I had once been so unhappy and so poor.
We began spending time with those in high society. We were young, famous, and rich. There was no limit to how high we could have reached. I dreamed of Rome, and I would have won it one day. There was just one problem: Rosario’s heart.
That big, kind heart was sick. No one knew it, they’d warned him to keep his illness a secret because it was the sort of thing that
could have kept him from getting certain jobs; but he had to be careful. Sometimes he forced himself to take time off, when overwork put his health in danger. He couldn’t let himself rest for too long, or he’d be overtaken by his rivals and he’d lose years. He needed to husband his energies. That was why his assistants needed to be more than just talented, they needed to be able to replace him without doing harm.
Rosario wanted a baby. He really wanted one. To tell the truth, I would have been happy to wait a little longer, but he kept insisting: perhaps he knew that what happened to him might happen.
He had selected two young men to serve as his assistants. They were both brilliant. He enjoyed watching them compete, seeing them intuit things even before he said anything. Then one of them was caught in a scandal, and he was out of the running. Only one remained.
Rosario was always telling me about this Tullio Iovine del Castello, one of the finest students he’d ever had. He always followed in my husband’s footsteps, he knew what my husband wanted before he did, he stayed on at work even when he wasn’t on duty. Rosario would have sent him off to be the director of the chair of gynecology in some smaller university.
But he never had the time.
Rosario died on the job. His heart gave out, unexpectedly.
You see, Commissario, I never knew that I loved my husband. Not as much as I did. I thought of the day we met as an ordinary fact of life, something obvious. Instead, a heart is a great vase full of liquid: the heaviest things settle to the bottom, and you never see them until you dive down in search of them.
Or until they break.
I was pregnant when Rosario died. He was in seventh heaven, he smiled like a little boy, he’d keep his hand on my belly and explain in great detail exactly what was happening inside me: you see, now this or that organ is forming, now you’re feeding it, now it’s moving. It was his pregnancy, even more than it was mine. And then one day he was gone.
The Bottom of Your Heart Page 39