Some Bitter Taste

by Magdalen Nabb

  As usual, the weather continued unbroken along the coastline. The news showed beaches with people packed side by side, radios loud against a background of squealing children and the yells of soft drink vendors. A reporter asked a lithe young woman lying between other bodies, well oiled and browning nicely, ‘People are starting to take their holidays in June or September these days, what do you think?’

  ‘You’re joking! And stay in the city in August? I’d die of the heat!’

  ‘It’s pretty hot here.’

  ‘If I get too hot I jump in the sea.’

  A shot of the sea with bodies packed as tightly as on the beach.

  It was the morning after that report, which made the marshal and his wife grateful not to be at the seaside, that he received a phone call at seven-thirty just as he was sitting down in his cool office.

  ‘Guarnaccia? Is that you?’

  ‘Speaking. Who …’

  ‘I don’t know whether you’ll remember me. Brogio, Antonio. We were at NCO school together.’

  ‘I don’t think…’

  ‘It’s all the same. Long time ago and I wasn’t in the army above ten years. I left when my father died. Took over his undertaker’s business.’

  ‘Ah! Brogio, yes. I’ve got you placed now. It must be … I don’t know how many years.’

  ‘Too many to think about, don’t dwell on it. Listen, this is a business call, I didn’t ring you up to waste time chatting.’

  ‘Business? No, listen—’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no! Nothing like that.’ Undertakers were known for paying bribes to policemen and emergency ward staff for directing business their way. ‘No, it’s your advice I want. I mean, it’s a bit of a funny business. Hardly the sort of thing you can ring 112 for so I thought, since we knew each other, you could tell me who I should call. The thing is, I’ve got a body here I can’t bury.’

  ‘Why ever not? The prosecutor told me—’

  ‘Somebody else might have done it and thought nothing of it, but after ten years as a carabiniere nobody can pull the wool over my eyes, know what I mean?’

  ‘I … no.’

  ‘There should have been an autopsy done.’

  The marshal knew that the prosecutor had released Sara Hirsch’s body for burial the day before and for one senseless moment his stomach tightened as it flashed on him that he had never read the second part of that autopsy—hadn’t the prosecutor said there was no need? In any case—

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I’m still here.’ He got a grip on himself. ‘There was an autopsy done. I have a copy of it here in the file. Besides, you can see for yourself—’

  ‘I can see a left arm broken at the shoulder and four broken fingers on the left hand is what I can see.’

  ‘An arm … ? No, no, I don’t think … If you want, I can read you—’

  ‘I know my business, Guarnaccia, and I can read a corpse with or without an autopsy. I’ve got this left arm, right? And what I’ve also got is a wound to the back of the head. And before you tell me that could have happened when the body hit the ground at the moment of death—’

  ‘Yes. That’s right. I saw the body and I remember a head wound …’ The marshal had grabbed the file and was trying to extract the autopsy reports from it with the receiver jammed under his chin. A broken arm? Maybe in the second one … ‘The attack was pretty brutal and the reconstruction …’ Damn! There were pages and pages … ‘An arm twisted behind the back isn’t unlikely … If you’ll just give me a minute.’

  ‘As many minutes as you like but I’d say you’ve got your wires crossed somewhere. I’m not saying he didn’t die of a stroke like the death certificate says. Even I can see from his face that he has had a stroke. All I’m saying is I can’t bury this chap until there’s an autopsy done because, whatever he died of, I’d say he had a bit of help and if you’ve got a file open on the business you’d better get round here.’

  There. It had happened.

  Eleven

  It was raining in the garden. The afternoon storm was over and the sky had lightened but it was still shrouded in mist and weeping softly on the wet earth and leaves. The marshal stood behind the French windows of the small sitting room and looked out, watching the rain, waiting for it to stop. Once or twice he thought it had but when he stepped outside and left the shelter of the porch he realised that he was wrong. Looking up, he could see only a misty haze, but the fine drops were touching his face and dampening the dark shoulders of his uniform, making them darker. The marshal, catlike, didn’t care for rain. A man obliged to be out all day in uniform never does like rain. No umbrellas, no taking your jacket off and borrowing something until it dries. He gets wet, he stays wet.

  So the marshal waited, looking out, and every so often he went as far as the path to check again. He was anxious to get to the lily pond. A few birds were beginning to sing but in the garden it was still raining.

  The visit to the Medico-Legal Institute that morning in stifling heat seemed like days ago. Sir Christopher’s body had been delivered there the day before. His own physician, contacted by the prosecutor, had been immovable.

  ‘Certainly the contusion on the head was pointed out to me. Sir Christopher suffered a number of very minor strokes and, some months ago, a rather more serious one which paralysed his right side and impaired his speech. I suggested a clinic but the idea distressed him. He could hardly be forced. He had a young man, a medical student I was told, who was in constant attendance. Sir Christopher was confined to a wheelchair of late and the only autonomous movement of which he was capable was that of transferral. In other words, getting himself from his bed to the wheelchair, from wheelchair to armchair and so on. For anything more complicated or potentially dangerous—the bathroom, for instance—he required assistance. I understand he attempted something of the sort alone and fell, hitting his head. The wound had been dressed and I removed the dressing to examine it. I found a very superficial excoriation, irrelevant as far as the cause of death was concerned—by all means, ask me anything you wish.’

  But the questions led nowhere.

  ‘No, I did not examine the left arm and hand since I had no reason to do so.

  ‘I would say that he had been dead for approximately twelve hours.

  ‘I was called by Sir Christopher’s secretary a little before eight and, since I had two urgent house calls to do, I arrived at L’Uliveto at about nine-thirty.

  ‘He was in his bed, where the boy who looked after him found him when he came into the room as usual at around seven-thirty A.M.

  ‘The body was composed and the bed tidy. The final stroke would seem to have occurred during sleep.

  ‘I saw no suspicious circumstances whatever. I would have alerted the appropriate authorities had I done so. Sir Christopher had been a very sick man for some time and his death was in no way unexpected.

  ‘You will find that an autopsy will confirm the cause of death as an ischaemic episode, possibly accompanied by some haemorrhaging, given the somewhat hardened condition of the arteries.’

  And it did. The pathologist had looked at Maestrangelo and the marshal across the half-exposed corpse. The sawn-off circle of skull had been sewn back in place with large black stitches.

  ‘What about the head injury?’ Maestrangelo asked.

  ‘Superficial.’

  ‘And the arm? The fingers?’

  ‘That’s your department. He didn’t do that falling out of bed.’

  With the cautionary tale of Sara Hirsch in mind, the marshal said, ‘He was meant to keep calm and quiet because of the risk of more strokes He’d had rheumatic fever as a boy. If somebody attacked him, twisting—breaking—his arm, could that have … you know ‘Upped his blood pressure, increased his heart rate, precipitated the blockage of the artery and its rupture? That what you’re after?’

  ‘I … yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No … ?’

  ‘Not a chance. Look here
.’ The pathologist lifted the cold, waxy limb. ‘What you can see on the underside is postmortem lividity—’

  ‘Just a moment.’ The captain looked at the mottled red patches, then at the pathologist. You can confirm that he died on his back?’

  ‘I can confirm that he was lying on his back for many hours not long after he died but postmortem lividity takes time to become visible and if the body’s moved in time and the process is not too far along, gravity will do its work and blood will settle according to the new position. Be that as it may, my point is that there’s no real bruising on the dislocated shoulder or broken fingers. These are postmortem fractures. Why would anybody twist the arm of a dead man? It’s an undertaker’s trick.’

  ‘No, no …’ Those big stitches reminded him of that hairdresser … he hadn’t seen her since they moved Enkeleda. ‘No. He called me to tell me about it. Refused to bury the man. He’s an ex-carabinieri, you see ‘Then I can’t help you. Undertakers sometimes have to do it, as you know, if the limbs aren’t composed immediately after death and rigor mortis causes difficulty in dressing the corpse.’

  ‘He didn’t dress it,’ the captain pointed out. ‘He just called us. And the man supposedly died in his bed, most likely in his sleep. The body was composed when his own doctor examined him and wrote the certificate.’

  ‘As I said, it’s a job for you.’ He had pushed the drawer back into the refrigerator.

  It was still raining. The marshal stood outside the French windows, sheltered under the porch, waiting. He found that if, instead of looking up at the misty, deceptive sky, he watched the leaves of the climbing roses and wisteria framing his view he could detect the tiny movements as fine raindrops touched them.

  A job for the carabinieri. One that could get you in real trouble if you didn’t do it thoroughly and even more trouble if you did.

  Well, it wasn’t the marshal’s responsibility and Captain Maestrangelo was just the officer for it. ‘Acting on information received, they were obliged, given the standing of the subject, to go through the proper motions to establish the circumstances of his death. An HSA report’—homicide, suicide, or accident, but he didn’t spell that out—'a routine procedure,’ with apologies to all concerned. The right man for the job. The marshal could have done without being there at all. Waiting for the captain to pick him up after lunch, he’d had a call from the prosecutor’s office. Rinaldi had gone out and was being followed in an unmarked car on Viale Petrarca.

  The prosecutor himself had come on the line when he’d explained his problem.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’d prefer to leave him on a long leash. Call me when you get back and I’ll let you know where he goes.’

  Up at the villa, the young gardener had opened the gates, acting as porter, this being August, as he’d explained.

  He said, in lowered tones, ‘There’s quite a crowd here. I’m glad to see you. I thought, to be honest, that they’d have had the decency to wait until he was dead—but then, they had no scruples last time, when his father was in hospital, so I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose.’

  This time, it was the marshal who said, ‘We’d better have a talk later.’

  ‘Just give me a shout. They’ve told me to open up the lemon house again. Opening the stable door rather than shutting it. They didn’t do him any harm, did they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll ring up to the house to announce you. Go in at the central door. Naturally, there isn’t a servant in the place. You’d better get inside quickly, there’s another storm brewing.’ Thunder was rumbling around the hills and there was a hot, damp wind blowing. When they got out of the car outside the house it was very dark.

  They were inside the mosaic hall with its dusty fountain when, with a deafening crack, the storm broke and the deluge began. Even in the gloom they had no need of any directions. There might have been no servants but there was a single light coming from a room to their left, the one where the marshal had glimpsed a boy in tears and Porteous’s hand slowly massaging.

  Men’s voices were loud beyond the open door, not raised but loud with authority and self-importance. It was the captain who asked permission and entered, the marshal following and remaining a step or two behind.

  The rain beat on the tall windows as the men in the room fell silent, a questioning silence on the part of the officials from the tax department and the men from the ministries of fine arts and of monuments, a silence of fear on the part of the thin, fair boy standing a little apart from them. But neither the captain nor the marshal looked at these people. The three men in the centre of the group drew their attention, the space around them electric. The eyes of Porteous and the smooth young lawyer were alert but confident, those of Rinaldi defiant. He’d had the time it took for them to come along the drive to prepare his expression but his face was red.

  ‘Good afternoon, Signor Rinaldi,’ the captain said. ‘Gentlemen …’

  One way or another, they all made some answer. Or did Rinaldi not speak? The marshal didn’t really notice. His big eyes had registered the long sitting room, its dusty brocaded chairs, its tapestries. But Rinaldi only made a fleeting impression, that of a long-sought-for road sign in the dark, pointing … Renato Rinaldi … 'Dear Renato, whose taste for fine paintings and statuary has always guided my own—more so than my father’s’… pointing to a fourth face, the face that held his attention as the captain began his discourse. Next to the beautiful woman, painted full length in oils, in her garden.

  “When you go into the house, look at her portrait in the long drawing room … the most beautiful woman I have ever seen … there’s a portrait of my father, too…’

  This one, too, full length in oils. Indoors in evening dress. The father. That was who held the marshal’s gaze. Young still, handsome, James Wrothesly, in his prime. There was no mistaking those eyes, that black determination, that unwavering stare. It was Jacob Roth.

  Now Rinaldi was talking.

  ‘The tax office asked me to assist with the valuation since I’m familiar with the collection so, naturally—’

  Unthinking, his eyes never leaving Jacob’s, the marshal touched the captain’s sleeve, interrrupting. ‘We need to call the prosecutor.’

  The captain looked at him. It was enough. Without a flicker of change in his habitual grave expression, he asked that they be shown to the room in which Sir Christopher was found dead and, once they were there, that they be left alone. Porteous, who accompanied them, was clearly unwilling to go but, if he had thought to protest, one look at the marshal’s face sufficed for him, too. He went, closing the door.

  The marshal was breathing heavily. Smells, sounds, images filled his head. Faces staring at him with intensity in life, faces mutely, blindly reproachful in death. The dark stink of a death camp, the perfumed light of a garden …

  And the captain needed explanations, logical connections, words, so many words …

  He did his best as his eyes photographed this new picture, the invaded room, its pretty furniture pushed aside, the big oak bed with the covers tossed to the foot, the imprint of its grave burden still visible. A wheelchair parked nearby. And the painting! Sara’s painting, no longer diminished to flat black and white strokes and patches but alive and dazzling. Water lilies … 'And if I watched them long enough …’

  ‘Guarnaccia…’

  ‘Yes. I’m still trying to take it in myself. My son once showed me something in one of his schoolbooks. A sort of trick picture. You could either see it as an orange-coloured silhouette of a chalice or else the black ones of two faces. You were always looking at the same thing, only it depended how you looked at it but, anyway, you could never see both at once, even for a split second. I don’t know if you follow me …’

  The captain looked desperate.

  ‘I’m sorry. That painting in the drawing room came as a bit of a shock to me but I realise it probably shouldn’t have done. When people change their names they always cling to something, don’t the
y? Sometimes the same initials, a middle name. You probably understand that better than me.’

  ‘Guarnaccia, before the prosecutor gets here, I need—’

  ‘Yes. Wrothesly. It’s a bit difficult for me to get my tongue round it but if you see it written down—and, after all, I did see it written down—it’s there, isn’t it? His real name. James Wrothesly, Sir Christopher’s father, was Jacob Roth. He made a fortune taking advantage of his fellow Jews fleeing from the Nazis in the thirties. Then he changed his name, perhaps in England, and married a rich young woman, brought her here, and had a son by her. But he had left a young Jewish girl pregnant in his father’s house above the shop in Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti. Sir Christopher and Sara were half brother and sister. There was trouble over the inheritance. We know what happened to Sara but…’He went close to the big bed, staring down at the imprint. ‘What happened to you?’

  Once the prosecutor arrived, Porteous and young Giorgio were called in to describe the events surrounding Sir Christopher’s death. It was clear from the start that Porteous had no problems about this at all. Only the boy was nervous and careful to speak only when spoken to. For the rest of the time his eyes were fixed on Porteous as he talked smoothly on. They were all on their feet. No one seemed inclined to sit down in this room.

  There was very little to recount, it seemed. Sir Christopher had spent the last day of his life in much the same way as many preceding ones. He rose early, helped, as was usual, by young Giorgio, and spent the first part of the morning on the dining terrace overlooking his late mother’s garden, his favourite spot and conveniently close to this room. When it became too hot outdoors he was brought inside and the boy read the daily paper to him. He ate very little lunch but otherwise appeared quite normal. He lay on the bed and slept for a while. There was a storm brewing in the afternoon which prevented his being outside. Again the boy read to him from the newspaper, which Sir Christopher, having lost the full use of his right hand after the last stroke, could not manage alone. After looking through some business papers between six and seven, as he generally did, he had a light supper and was helped to bed. He didn’t complain of feeling ill. On coming into the room at about seven-thirty the next morning and opening the outer shutters and the French windows, the boy discovered that Sir Christopher was dead. He called the secretary at once. Of course, there had been some deterioration recently, but naturally Sir Christopher’s death, coming as it did without any immediate warning signs, was a terrible shock.