STUNNING DEVELOPMENT IN THE FLYING BOAT
MYSTERY
VANISHING BANKER'S WIFE SHOT AT VILLA BORGHESE
Rome, night of the fifteenth
As we announced, Maria Agliati, wife of banker Francesco Agliati, who vanished mysteriously during an Ostia-Naples flight on the twelfth, arrived in Rome today from Athens with her daughter Alice Agliati. They are staying at the Hotel Flora, where they were met and interrogated by Vice Commissario Galbiati. During the evening they took a little walk in Villa Borghese, and in Corso Italia they turned left onto via del Muro Torto, almost totally deserted at that hour. They were approaching the Roman Athletic Association tennis courts when a car coming from Porta Pinciana without lights drew level with them, and four revolver shots were fired from the car.
Luckily two of them missed their targets, but Signora Agliati was shot in the shoulder and her daughter was slightly scratched in the face by a flying bullet. The tennis court night guard, Costantino Felicetti, 42, promptly came to the rescue, joined immediately by a passing motorist, Augusto Salviani, shopkeeper, who offered to drive the two unfortunate women to the hospital.
At the General Hospital, very luckily, the wounds turned out not to be serious, but both women remain in a serious state of shock. Vice Commissario Galbiati and the Squadra Volante were immediately informed of the shooting, but there are no clues at the time of writing to explain the new, enigmatic development of The Flying Boat Mystery. Nobody had noticed the car at the crowded crossroads of Porta Pinciana, and Signor Salviani barely noticed it as he was turning into via del Muro Torto from Piazza Flaminio.
As he reached the highway bridge, the mysterious car overtook him at high speed, and, finding the avenue almost entirely occupied by a cart, it jumped onto the streetcar railway low platform to the right. Signor Salviani was unable to offer any clues about the car, however, other than that it was a low, dark saloon, possibly an Alfa Romeo or a Lancia. So the new episode of The Flying Boat Mystery seems almost as inexplicable and confusing as the banker Agliati's disappearance from the Ostia-Naples sea plane. It has been reported that Vice Questore Renzi has found, in Sicily, some clues of remarkable importance for his investigation. Meanwhile, the shooting case is being investigated by his assistant, Vice Commissario Galbiati.
9-BLACKMAIL AND ATTACK
High noon. Piazza del Collegio Romano. The pavement was burning hot under the cruel July sun. In the heavy blue sky, the swallows flew away, scared by a sudden, but not uncommon, explosion of tolling bells.
Renzi met his assistant in the police headquarters hallway. Vice Commissario Galbiati was small and thin, with a certain oriental slant to his shining-black pearly eyes, always kindled with a vivacious sparkle of energetic enthusiasm.
‘How are things going, Galbiati?’
‘Welcome back to Rome, sir.’
They walked together, seeking the blessed shadow of the Pantheon.
‘And Signora Agliati?’
‘I only saw her for a few moments. She’s not unwell, but she needs a few days of total rest. She’s still very shaken.’
‘And her daughter?’
‘She doesn’t know anything about the case. And as for me, I know even less than she does!’
‘Splendid,’ smiled Luigi sadly. ‘Nothing at all about the phantom car, of course? Nothing at all about their staying at the Flora? No clues, no curious accidents?’
‘According to the hotel personnel, yesterday afternoon Signora Agliati received only one phone call, from a reporter named Marietti.’
‘Have you tried to find him?’
‘Without result so far.’
‘A false name, of course.’
‘Do you think the phone call could be connected?’
‘I wouldn’t swear to it, but... When can I speak to Signora Agliati?’
‘Tomorrow, I think, but I can’t be sure about it!’
They arrived at the famous restaurant La Rosetta, highly cherished by Luigi, and he invited his assistant to lunch. Galbiati was so obsessed with his sense of duty that he tried ceremoniously to resist, but Luigi managed to drag him into the pleasantly fresh, dark old rooms where the deserted white-clothed tables gave a slight feeling of neglected isolation, soon dispelled by the excellent spaghetti alla carbonara.
‘This morning I had only a coffee and a brioche,’ explained Luigi.
Galbiati enjoyed his chief’s momentary silence, then asked him what he had discovered in Naples.
‘Everything and nothing, my dear Galbiati. Marchetti is certainly off the hook. I know how, why, where and when Sabelli was killed but I don’t know who did it, so.... ’ He gave a semi-comic sigh and ate silently for a long and mournful moment. ‘Getting back to Rome, my dear Galbiati, what about the crew?’
‘As you asked, I contacted SANA and they—.’
‘Excellent, Galbiati.’
Luigi reflected for a moment, whilst the waiter disappeared with the empty dishes:
‘All that's left is our disappearing banker. You’ve requested his luggage from Brindisi, but it hasn’t yet arrived in Naples. I fervently hope it will not be as full of surprises as the other four! Remind me whether he arrived with it at his Rome hotel.’
Galbiati sighed:
‘Yes, and he asked that it be sent via the Hotel D’Azeglio van to Termini Station. It was a very bulky luggage, I hope you don’t think..... ’
‘My dear Galbiati, I have heard Commissario Boldrin doing a lot of plausible reasoning about a return ticket to Brindisi.’
‘A return ticket to Brindisi?’
‘Agliati’s ticket. It was in his briefcase, but where do you keep a railway ticket, when you’re travelling? In your pocket, of course, or in your pocketbook. So I’m beginning to have many doubts about Agliati’s trip.... ’
Galbiati smiled, not all that convinced. He liked Renzi, he was a good man and a friendly boss, and he admired his mind and his clever, unconventional methods, but he talked too much to be a good policeman. For Superintendent Galbiati, policemen had to act first and talk later, and then only if required. So he was relieved when his chief returned to a more business-like conversation:
‘Have you discovered anything else about his stay in Rome? How did he get to Ostia, that morning? ’
‘We found a cab driver named Giovanni Pratesi, living at 14, via Ancona. On the morning of the twelfth, at eleven o’clock, he picked up a passenger for the Ostia sea airport from Piazza Venezia. He remembered him very well because he was in a great hurry and they argued about the fare. I didn’t have Agliati’s picture, so his identification is not certain, but he did describe him as a fat, tubby middle-aged man.’
‘And, of course, he was in a hurry because he had been delayed and didn’t want to risk missing the plane. Well done, Galbiati. The description is quite good, and certainly Signora Agliati will have her husband’s picture for better identification. She’s Greek, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, but Agliati, as you know, was Italian by birth and took Greek citizenship only fifteen years ago. They were married in 1918.’
Renzi looked thoughtful:
‘He was in Athens for a year whilst he was founding the Italy & Greece Bank... But have one of these splendid Burbank Californian prunes, my dear Galbiati!’
He offered him a big, juicy violet prune, but Galbiati refused politely.
‘An apricot, then?’
‘No, thank you very much, sir.’
‘Don’t stand on ceremony, Galbiati. Pick a Burbank, do me a favour! ’
Galbiati accepted reluctantly and returned to business with a shadow of a smile:
‘Agliati went to Greece from Milan in 1917, with a regular Italian passport.’
Renzi smiled with pleasure. He was having both a prune and an apricot. But he sighed and turned to another question:
‘What was his business in Italy, before Greece?’
‘So far, nobody knows. But I hope to receive more information from Milan, this evening or tomorrow morning.’
They talked lazily for some time, because they were reluctant to return outside under the cruel, white-hot Roman sun. The white-clothed table in the quiet, cool, dark corner was far more inviting. They smoked a bit in silence and only when the hands reached three o'clock did they find the courage to go outside.
‘My dear Galbiati, I shall return home for an hour. Is Signora Agliati still in hospital?’
‘No, she returned to the Flora this morning.’
‘Please pay her a visit and try to obtain a recent photo of Agliati, then try to find our cab driver again. I’ll phone if we can take him to HQ for questioning. Sorry, I must leave now, here’s my bus!’
Pratesi, the small, alert cab driver, answered Renzi’s questions promptly. But Agliati’s picture gave him his first moment of perplexity:
‘Yes, he was middle-aged, grizzled, and quite fat, but I don’t remember him having a moustache... and he seemed darker and younger.’
‘And he didn't have a moustache?’
‘I didn't study him closely, but I think I would have remembered if he’d had one... And he seemed balder, too!’
Renzi had a sudden thought. He selected some snapshots from a drawer and handed them to the witness:
‘Do you recognise any of these?’
Pratesi picked out a snapshot, and, peeking over his boss’s shoulder, Galbiati recognised the bank teller Larini!
‘That’s him, for sure! He looked just like that when he refused to give me a tip.’ Pratesi was once again assertive. Renzi and Galbiati exchanged disappointed looks, then released the driver. Galbiati compared the two snapshots:
‘They do look vaguely similar, yes.’
‘So now we know less than before. We’ll meet again this evening.’
Renzi made a very depressed exit and tried to put some order in his very muddled thoughts with a little walk under the fierce Roman sun. But it was too fierce, and when he turned onto the boulevard he wisely decided to take a bus to his next destination: Piazza Colonna and the Metropolitan Bank.
After a short ride, he was in its offices, semi-deserted because it was almost five o’clock. He recognized the stocky Larini amongst the tellers and asked to speak to the director. He was absent, so Renzi was obliged to question the head of personnel, Deputy Director Santini, a middle-aged, undistinguished, bald-headed man, with pale and motionless eyes and face, and very expressive and movable thin lips, the only distinctive features in his vague and anonymous countenance.
‘Yes, certainly we sent Larini to Palermo. The Direttori and I decided on it together. It was a very urgent business deal. Our Palermo branch is working on a merger with the Corleone Bank, and Larini had to take the plane to Palermo that very morning: he was taking confidential papers of the utmost importance, vital to closing the deal. Regrettably, the forced stop in Naples and consequent delay hampered operations, and the deal was not as beneficial to us as it would have been the day before.... ’
He began an extensive explanation of his bank’s losses, numbers to hand, but Renzi thanked him and excused himself, only to face the white-hot Roman sun yet again. Santini was warmly and deeply in love with the sound of his own voice, but for some reason Luigi didn’t share his affection.
At 44, via Condotti, in the offices of the Italy & Argentina Bank, he found a very different atmosphere. The clerks were a bit too fawning in their attentions, and Managing Director Marsigli weighed his words carefully. He was tall and dark, with finely-chiselled features, an alert eye, and the glib words of the clever fox, finding a smooth way out of every tangled situation.
Luigi attacked him with his usual sharp alertness:
‘You have very strange clerks, Commendatore Marsigli.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Marsigli looked attentively at him.
‘Your bank sent a notorious ex-convict to Tunis.’
‘To Tunis? To my friend and correspondent, the director of the Simoun?’
Luigi was irked by the cautious answer:
‘Yes, you sent him confidential papers using a man called Pagelli, an old jailbird involved with illegal emigration... An old friend of the police, not your usual common or garden variety confidential messenger!’
Marsigli’s grey eyes lit up with an angry sparkle:
‘Just a moment, please.’ Through the intercom he ordered Assistant Managing Director Sandri to be sent to him immediately. Renzi had been longing for such an interview. Sandri’s phone number was the first one noted casually by poor Sabelli on his suitcase. The man was tall and skeletal, with steel-rimmed spectacles, trousers that were too short, and high buttoned boots. Marsigli introduced him to Renzi:
‘Dr. Renzi is warning us that the Bertieri fellow we sent to Tunis with my letter to Morangis is an ex-convict named Pagelli!’
Sandri showed the requisite astonishment:
‘An ex-convict?’
Renzi, irritated by the show of incredulity, clarified:
‘An ex-convict, jailed for aiding and abetting illegal emigration to America.’
‘Did you know about this, Sandri?’
‘Not exactly, sir,’ babbled the befuddled assistant managing director. ‘I mean to say, certainly not! I was informed that Bertieri was not a model employee, but they told me only that he had been a daredevil youngster, doing the usual silly things youngsters are always doing... but nothing more, and now he seemed on the right track, very anxious to earn his money honestly. A good worker, eager and efficient in his work....’
Luigi interrupted the usual long list of ready-to-use compliments:
‘Who recommended him?’
‘Our man in Viterbo, if I remember rightly,’ replied Marsigli, comforted by Sandri’s prompt nod.
‘We didn’t have anyone else on hand and he seemed very good for the job. My letter to Morangis was merely technical in nature, and he did splendid work in Tunis, in any case,’ concluded Marsigli smugly, dismissing Renzi with a look of annoyed disinterest about the whole question.
So Luigi skipped any allusions to Giuseppe Sabelli and was gently escorted out by Sandri. They exchanged some vague courtesies and Renzi asked him bluntly:
‘What do you think about the Metropolitan Bank? Is it quite solid?’
‘I very much hope so: it’s owned by our group,’ Sandri replied, with the ghost of a smile on his mournful countenance as he led Luigi through the bank’s monumental doorway.
On July the sixteenth nothing happened. Signora Agliati was doing better, but Renzi had to wait another day to question her. Nothing emerged about Sabelli and Marchetti; nobody knew how they had spent their time before the deadly trip to Naples. The press was at last informed about the mysterious and grisly suitcases, and Renzi couldn’t stop them from tying Sabelli’s murder to The Flying Boat Mystery.
The Milan police had found no traces of a Francesco Agliati having left Italy for Greece in 1917. The mystery was growing darker and more muddled, but Renzi was not worried: the affair was so tangled and complex that a single clue could instantly solve it... if only it could be found!
The following morning, Signora Maria Agliati was sitting in her suite at the Flora. She was a natural blonde, and her quiet blue eyes and rosy, fresh face masked her real age of forty. She was still pale, but she was calm and in full control. Her daughter Alice, a gracious girl of fourteen, swiftly vanished from the room. Luigi enquired politely about Signora Agliati’s health, refraining from assuming an official tone, so the interview had more the appearance of a social visit. It was Renzi’s way of conducting an investigation, and certainly neither Galbiati nor Boldrin would have approved of it. But social sensibility doesn’t preclude insisting on the tactless subject of her husband and his mysterious past, and even more mysterious present and future. Maria had met him in Athens in January of 1918, when he had founded the Italy & Greece Bank, but he had never told her the motive for his emigration to Greece:
‘He was very vague, he hinted only at some business problem. He had suffered heavy losses for his partner’s
misdeeds... But he never told me any details, and I never knew what kind of business it was!’
‘So these heavy losses determined his decision to leave Italy for good?’
‘I don't know, maybe they happened some years before. Really, he was quite vague about it!’
Luigi was very thoughtful and he murmured almost to himself:
‘Of course, or in 1917 he wouldn’t have had the capital to found his bank, immediately after his arrival in Athens.’ He lifted his head in his habitual resolute gesture as he moved to the decisive question:
‘And yesterday ? Nothing happened before....’
A shadow darkened the quiet blue eyes for a brief moment. But was it a shadow of incertitude, or did it mark a painful recollection?
‘Nothing at all,’ she answered uncertainly.
Renzi waited again before asking about the phone call she had received at the hotel, and his patience was fully rewarded, perhaps because Signora Agliati had guessed the nature of his next question:
‘You will understand, Dr. Renzi, that I would much prefer to not speak about a certain circumstance... but yesterday a reporter named Marietti phoned me at the hotel at around four o’clock.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘Not at all, but he told me that it was for a very urgent and important question....’
‘Signora Agliati? Marietti of Il Popolo di Roma. I beg you not to speak to anybody about... Signora Agliati?’
‘Speaking.’
‘I’m Giuseppe for this conversation.’
‘But—.’
‘It’s about your husband, Signora Agliati. I have in my possession, I can’t tell you how, certain papers about him that, if they were to be published, could....’
‘I forbid you to do so.’
‘They are about his business before leaving Italy, you know... Do you understand?’
‘I understand only too well, and I know that Francesco had nothing to reproach himself for, they were his business partner’s—.’
The Flying Boat Mystery Page 10