Death in the Tuscan Hills

by Marco Vichi

  ‘I am endlessly repentant,’ the lawyer was quick to reply, hand over his heart, using the same church-inspired language as Bordelli.

  ‘All right, then, take a pen and a sheet of paper and write me a nice confession.’

  ‘Let me explain first …’

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘What happened—’

  The ringing of the telephone made him jump in his chair, and Bordelli signalled to him not to answer. After ten interminable rings, silence at last returned.

  ‘You were saying?’

  ‘It was a terrible accident … A tragedy … Nobody wanted that to happen …’

  ‘I’m really moved, I assure you,’ said Bordelli, smiling.

  ‘I swear … We had no intention of …’

  ‘You just wanted to have a little fun, is that it?’

  ‘We didn’t realise … It was as if we’d lost our minds …’

  ‘He was twelve years old …’

  ‘Anyway, I wasn’t the one who—’

  ‘I know, it was Panerai who strangled him … But wasn’t what you all did to him a way of killing him just the same?’

  ‘Well … I …’ Beccaroni tried to speak, and when Bordelli slammed his hand down on the desk, he gave a start.

  ‘Enough chit-chat! Take that pen and paper and write me a confession.’

  ‘All right … Yes …’ He looked for a pen, took a blank sheet of paper, and laid it down in front of him.

  ‘Start it like this, in your own words: I am endlessly repentant for the crime I committed … Come on, write …’

  He pointed the gun between Beccaroni’s eyes, and the man began to write. Completing the phrase, he raised his head, awaiting further instructions.

  ‘I can never forgive myself. My conscience gives me no rest … Write …’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘I trust in God’s forgiveness …’

  Bordelli got up and went and stood behind him. He noticed that although Beccaroni held the pen in his right hand, he couldn’t rule out that the man might be left handed. Maybe he’d been forced in elementary school not to use the hand of the devil. It was a detail not to be ignored. He waited for the lawyer to finish writing, then took the sheet from him and read it. The sentences were correct, written in a very tidy hand. He compared it with some of the other papers scattered on the desk, and found that the handwriting was the same.

  ‘It’s not good enough. Let’s start over,’ he said, laying the sheet down on the desk.

  ‘What should I write?’ asked Beccaroni, docile as a lamb. He seemed a little calmer, perhaps because he knew that a confession of that sort would be worthless.

  ‘Recount what happened in that basement in Via Luna, on the night of the murder. Make it a proper document, I mean it. You’re a lawyer, you know what I mean …’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘And I advise you not to lie. Signorini told me all the details. If you write anything different …’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Good. Be sure to include the names of your friends … Livio Panerai, Italo Signorini, and Monsignor Sercambi …’

  ‘Signorini and Panerai … are no longer around …’ the lawyer timidly pointed out.

  ‘As you can see, every so often, conscience bears fruit. Now get busy,’ Bordelli concluded, pressing the barrel of the gun against Beccaroni’s neck. He waited for the lawyer to find the inspiration for the opening and, still standing behind him, started reading:

  20 March 1967

  I, the undersigned, Moreno Beccaroni, born in Florence 9 July 1922, confess to the following: on the night of 11 October 1966, Livio Panerai, Italo Signorini and Monsignor Sercambi, of the Episcopal Curia of Florence, and I …

  Beccaroni stopped, panting softly, as though the word that followed cost him great effort.

  … raped a young boy, Giacomo Pellissari, who had been kidnapped and drugged by Signorini. Most unfortunately, in the agitation of the moment, Panerai strangled the boy. It was a terrible accident; none of us wanted that to happen. Our intention was to release him that same night. We were desperate and didn’t know what to do. Panerai suggested a solution, and we all agreed to it. We put the body in the refrigerator, to slow down the process of decay, and a few days later, on a Saturday, taking advantage of the fact that the National station was broadcasting Studio Uno, Panerai and Signorini loaded the body into Panerai’s car and …

  By this point Beccaroni was well on his way and progressed without any difficulty, calling things by their proper names. Bordelli let him write and started pacing up and down the carpet, never once letting him out of his sight.

  The lawyer now seemed almost calm. But it certainly wasn’t due to the opportunity to get these things off his conscience. By now he must have been convinced that his life was no longer in danger, and he was probably already thinking of the moment when he would retract his confession …

  Having reached the bottom of the page, he grabbed another and kept on writing. He jutted his lips out slightly, like a schoolboy writing his theme in composition class. His golden fountain pen raced across the page without stopping. In the silence of the room the only sound was the scratching of the tip against the paper, accompanied by the slow tick-tock of the tall pendulum clock that elegantly occupied one corner of the study. Bordelli felt sorry as he watched him, newly prey to doubt … Was he right to do what he was about to do? Was it really the only possible solution? He bit his lip and banished these thoughts …

  Beccaroni finished covering a second page and raised his head.

  ‘I’m done,’ he said, setting the pen down.

  Bordelli went over and picked up the pages and, still pacing back and forth, read the entire confession. The account matched the more detailed one that young Italo Signorini had given him orally before throwing himself out of the window. At the bottom of the second page was Beccaroni’s signature.

  ‘Very good …’

  ‘What will you do now?’ Beccaroni ventured to ask him, beginning to sweat again.

  ‘There’s no hurry.’

  ‘You may not believe it, but I’m happy to pay for my crime.’

  ‘You could have done so earlier, of your own accord.’

  ‘I know, I know … You’re absolutely right … But it’s not easy … It was you who …’ And he stopped, tears in his eyes.

  ‘Well, you ought to thank me for giving you the opportunity to fulfil your wish to atone.’

  ‘Yes … Quite right … I’m infinitely grateful to you … You’ve no idea how grateful …’

  There was a slight quaver in his voice, as if he were about to start crying. He actually seemed sincere. Bordelli folded the pages and put them in his pocket. He now had to check something very important. He took a pencil out of the pen-holder and threw it at Beccaroni, who tried to catch it on the fly. With his left hand. He was left handed. So to kill himself he would have to hold the pistol in his left hand. The lawyer did not grasp the reason behind that strange act, and smiled obtusely.

  Bordelli decided that the time had come. Pacing slowly, seeming absorbed in thought, he circled behind the desk again and stopped behind Beccaroni’s chair.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ he said.

  ‘What is happening?’ asked the lawyer, turning his head.

  ‘Don’t worry …’

  Without Beccaroni seeing him, Bordelli put the Beretta in the holster and grabbed the Browning. For a moment he thought of telling Beccaroni that his friend the butcher hadn’t committed suicide, but then decided against it. It would have served no purpose, other than to upset him even more. He took the first page the lawyer had written under dictation, and put it in front of him.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Beccaroni, eyes scanning the page.

  ‘Nothing …’ said Bordelli.

  Taking him by surprise, he managed to make him practically grab the pistol in his left hand, then fired it point blank into his temple. The lawyer’s head jerked slightly to one side
and then fell hard on to the desk, directly on top of his first, very brief confession. The dogs outside started barking. A stream of blood trickled out of the entrance wound, and the dead man’s eyes retained an astonished expression. His left hand hung down, lightly touching the rug. Bordelli raised it, wrapped the lawyer’s fingers around the butt of the Browning, then let the hand fall back down. He was wearing gloves, so he would leave no fingerprints, and if it occurred to anyone to test for paraffin on a suicide, the result would confirm the facts …

  At that moment the doorbell rang, and Bordelli held his breath. It was 10.27. Time had flown. It rang again, more insistently this time. The two Dobermanns had stopped barking. Making no sound, he went and took the torch out of his bag and, covering the light, moved out of the study and up to the first floor as the doorbell kept ringing. Slipping into a room that gave on to the street, he peered out through the slats in the outdoor blinds. He could see the silhouette of a person looking in towards the house, behind the bars of the entrance gate … Was it the nightwatchman on his first round? Beccaroni’s daughter? Or perhaps a neighbour who’d heard the shot?

  Every so often the silhouette stepped away from the gate to ring the bell again, then went back to watch the house. The person stayed there for another couple of minutes, then disappeared, and moments later a car’s headlights could be seen moving away down the road.

  Bordelli went down to the ground floor with the help of the torch, to make sure that all the windows were shut tight and to see whether there were any other doors. He discovered two large drawing rooms and a number of smaller ones, nicely furnished and welcoming, like everything else. The inside shutters were locked and bolted, and the back door was locked not only with a bar but also a deadbolt. The exact same situation as in the contessa’s castle, when Orlando was hanged …

  He continued his little tour of the premises, never once turning on any lights. He went back up to the first floor and poked his head into all the rooms. Canopy beds, large, dark armoires, a few paintings from various epochs, sometimes by great painters, hung in the right places. One of the most beautiful villas he’d ever seen. It seemed impossible to him that such refinement could coexist with perversion, but history was full of similar examples. There were some very cultured men among the Nazi and Fascist ranks, aficionados of the arts and letters who could speak six or seven languages fluently, learnedly discuss philosophy, music, the Italian Renaissance … And as they savoured fine foods and sipped prized wines, their thoughts and actions produced violence and death.

  At the end of the corridor he opened a door narrower than the rest and found himself looking at a long staircase that led upstairs to the attics. He went all the way up, pushed open another small door and cast the beam of the torch into a large, almost empty space. Aside from the spiderwebs hanging from the rafters, there were only a pair of old armoires and a dismantled bed. The whole place smelled of dust and centuries past. A forgotten place, perfect for hiding at the proper moment. But for now he had no desire to shut himself up in there.

  He went back down to the ground floor, into the ‘suicide’s’ study, and dropped into a chair opposite the dead man. If he’d had his cigarettes with him, he would have lit one immediately. All he could do now was wait …

  Looking at Beccaroni’s goggled eyes, he recalled the man’s desperate words … Had he really repented? Would he have been willing to confess in front of a judge? And even to drag Monsignor Sercambi into court? At one point he’d even seemed sincere, as if he’d suddenly realised the gravity of what he’d done … Was Bordelli right to have killed him? It was too late to turn back now …

  He studied the spines of the hundreds of volumes lining the shelves. None of these books had been able to prevent Beccaroni from becoming what he was. Could men ever change? Could they transform themselves the way the grub becomes a butterfly? During one grappa-fuelled night, Dante had once said that Plato did not think so: one is necessarily born the way one is, and the only way to be different is to be born ‘someone else’ … Was it really so? Was there no such thing as guilt? Or merit? Were St Francis and Hitler the way they were because fate had decided so, or did they have a choice? At that moment it was easy to be overcome with doubt …

  The ringing of the telephone shattered his thoughts, filling the silence of the great house with its anxious sound. He imagined it must be the same person who’d been ringing at the gate. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing, and began to seem downright hysterical. Then it suddenly stopped, only to start again a few seconds later, for longer than the first time around. And again it stopped, then resumed, several times over, as though angry … At last it stopped in the middle of a ring, and the house fell silent. Now what?

  He realised he was very thirsty. He went and got the bottle of water from his bag and drank almost half, with the feeling that, little by little, every cell in his body was getting its proper dose of fluid. He wasn’t the least bit hungry, but it was better, just the same, to chew on something. Without removing his gloves, he opened a slab of chocolate and ate a few squares, letting it melt against his palate. He took out his book and started reading, clumsily turning the pages with his gloved fingers.

  Half an hour later he heard a car pull up outside the villa. Actually it sounded as if there were two. Grabbing his bag, he went out of the study, and as he was climbing the stairs he heard the doorbell ring. He went and peered out of the same shutter as before. One of the cars was a police car, with its light flashing. Visible behind the bars of the gate, sporadically illuminated by the revolving blue light, were two officers and another man in uniform, no doubt the night guard who’d heard the gunshot. The doorbell rang again, then once more. The third time it lasted for almost a whole minute, then silence returned at last …

  At half past three in the morning, he pulled up on the threshing floor in the Beetle, and as he turned the engine off he felt all his muscles relax. While driving up the Imprunetana he’d eaten a panino and drunk a little water. Before entering his house, he turned round to look at the dark mass of the castle, which for some time now had shown no lights in its windows. In his mind he sent a final word of thanks to Orlando and the contessa, who, without knowing …

  Opening the door he immediately found Blisk, all waggy tailed and bleary eyed, and stroked his muzzle.

  ‘There was a change of plan … I’ve come home early …’

  He went and put the remaining panini in the fridge, then went over to the fireplace, where he set fire to Beccaroni’s full confession. He’d only wanted it to compare it with Signorini’s. He scattered the ash with the little shovel, to get rid of all trace. Grabbing a pack of Nazionali cigarettes, he went outside with the dog for a stroll through the olive grove. He smoked one cigarette after another, blowing the smoke up to the star-filled sky. He had a faint sense of oppression, of something lightly weighing on his conscience … but it would soon pass. It was probably mostly fatigue. Whatever the case, everything had gone better than expected.

  The private guard had stopped to leave his ticket in the mailbox at the exact moment he’d fired the Browning, which set all the machinery in motion … Wasn’t that, too, a sign of destiny?

  The guard had rung the bell, tried to phone, and in the end had gone to the police. A squad car came to the scene, and half an hour later the fire department also showed up, accompanied by two more police cars. He’d kept spying through the slats in the first-floor shutters, and the floodlight pointed into the garden allowed him to recognise Piras. This discovery had almost made him smile. The Sardinian knew all about Beccaroni and company, and was probably presently racking his brain with questions … He was sure to ring his former boss the following day in the hope of finding out what had happened.

  The firemen succeeded in snaring the dogs and then locking them up in their own enclosure at the back of the garden. Bordelli had observed the difficult operation through the shutters of several different rooms. He even saw a couple of journalists arrive with cameras. When the
officers gave the order to break through one of the windows, he fled up into the attic, keeping the small door ajar in order to listen. He heard some crashing sounds, then the voices of the people coming in. It was impossible to understand what they were saying, but he could nevertheless tell at what moment they discovered the dead Beccaroni with his head on the desk …

  The whole thing went pretty quickly, considering the circumstances. Just a little over forty minutes passed between the moment they broke through the window and the moment the corpse was loaded into the ambulance. It took another half-hour to nail the window shut from the inside, and to iron out the last bureaucratic details. Finally they all left, and silence returned … Shortly thereafter, he’d suddenly remembered something that made him break out in a cold sweat. He realised he’d completely forgotten an extremely important detail. Had the front door of the villa been simply pulled shut, automatically locking it, or had they taken the trouble to find the keys and give the lock an extra turn or two? He hadn’t even checked to see whether the lock opened from the inside with a handle, or whether you needed the keys. What a stupid shit he’d been! With his heart in his throat, he quickly went downstairs to check, thinking inevitably of fate. He was biting his lips as he approached the door, but then heaved a sigh of relief … It was a modern lock, one of those with a handle, and on top of this, nobody had bothered to give it a turn of the key. He could walk out unmolested, leaving no trace whatsoever of his having been there. But he didn’t want to spoil everything in his haste to leave, and he waited nearly another hour, sitting on the staircase.

  Time seemed to have stood still, and he went on a sort of journey through his memory. An incoherent but relaxing journey through the different stages of his life … He even remembered a freezing-cold night in February of ’44, in Cassino, when to distract himself in his insomnia he’d fashioned a knuckleduster from part of an aluminium propeller blade from a British plane that had been shot down. At the end of the war he’d taken it home with him as a souvenir, but one morning his mother had secretly thrown it out with the rubbish. For him it was as if a part of his life had been thrown away, but he managed not to get angry, so as not to humiliate the poor woman, who’d already been through so much …