“A letter Turellini had written?”
“I’d written.”
“Why would your husband want to kill Turellini? The two men were friends.”
“They used to be friends.”
“They were colleagues.”
“That was before.” Again her glance turned to Signora Scola. “Doctors can be as jealous as women, you know.”
“Why kill Carlo Turellini?”
“My husband killed nobody.”
“You said he’d killed Turellini.”
“On the day of Carlo’s death, my husband was in Rome.” She shrugged her acquiescence. “Carlo had been having an affair with me. That was something my husband could not bring himself to accept.”
Trotti coughed. “I imagine Dr. Quarenghi, living alone in Rome, must have ample time to have his own affairs.”
The woman said flatly, “I hope so for his sake.”
“Why?”
“It would be something other than his work.” Signora Quarenghi shrugged. “My husband’s a jealous man. But don’t think he’s some passionate Latin lover.” She laughed to herself and it was then, as her face caught the light from the window that Trotti noticed there was a nervous tic agitating her eyebrow. “His job, his house, his car, his dog, his young wife. They’re symbols of his success. And he doesn’t want anyone touching them. Because if you do …”
Signora Scola raised her head. “Yes?”
“You touch them at your own risk.” She met Trotti’s glance. “At your own very considerable risk.”
49: Paolo
“CARLO TURELLINI WAS murdered early in the morning of Friday, October twenty-third while leaving the garage of his villa in Segrate.”
Signora Quarenghi nodded.
“The previous evening, your husband found a note you had written to Carlo Turellini and there was a quarrel?”
“No.”
“No what?”
“There was a letter—it’s true. A stupid letter I wrote to Carlo.”
“And your husband found it?”
“My husband was in Rome.”
Simona Scola held her pen motionless above the note pad and watched the other woman in silence.
“About a week before Carlo’s death. A letter I’d sent him.”
“To Turellini?”
She nodded again. “Somebody—goodness knows who—made a photocopy and sent it to my husband at the Ministry in Rome.”
“And your husband was furious?”
“I wasn’t with him.”
“Then how did you know about the letter?”
“I didn’t—at least, not until much later.”
“But you had a premonition?”
“I think I was still in love with Carlo. He was with the Englishwoman but I still loved him.”
“And, on the basis of a premonition, you accused your husband of murdering Carlo Turellini?”
She started to fumble with a packet of Muratti cigarettes that lay on the black piano near the directories. “I was acting strangely.”
“When did you see your husband?”
“I spent the day at the barracks in Segrate. The day Carlo was murdered. They tested me because they seemed to think I could have murdered Carlo.”
“And your husband?”
“He came up from Rome on the Pendolino to take me home.”
“There was a quarrel?”
“No quarrel.” A thin laugh. “My husband isn’t like that. He doesn’t have to shout or raise his voice to impose his will.”
“Your husband was very angry?”
“I had accused him of murdering my lover. What do you think, Signor Commissario? Paolo’s always considered me as a personal possession.”
“In this instance, his own wife was being seduced by a close friend.”
“You understand perfectly, commissario. Only Carlo didn’t seduce me. He screwed me, he penetrated me, we made love for nights on end.” She nodded as she placed a cigarette in her mouth. “Paolo Quarenghi gave up sharing the same bed with me a long, long time ago. He had better things to do.”
“You had a premonition your husband intended to do something rash?”
“I told you my husband was in Rome.”
“If your husband was in Rome, how could you be afraid of his reactions?”
“I was acting strangely. Perhaps …” She shook her head, as if trying to dismiss an idea. “I knew it was over between Carlo and me. That’s what frightened me. I knew he was with the Englishwoman—but I couldn’t take it seriously. A stupid, ignorant Englishwoman.”
“She wanted to have his child.”
She looked at Trotti and she could have been a little girl. She spoke very softly. “The realization I was going to be alone again.”
“Why were you afraid of your husband?”
Signora Quarenghi’s hand went to the blue scarf. “Paolo Quarenghi’s not a violent man. He’s never raised his hand to me, if that’s what you think.”
“You had reason to believe he could be violent if he was angered?”
“Nothing like that.” A thin smile. “We hardly quarrel anymore. My husband has other interests in his life.”
“You didn’t quarrel over the letter?”
“Paolo simply becomes very distant. It’s as if I were the maid from Mauritius. He speaks to me only to give me orders or because he needs something. Sometimes he disappears from the house. The rest of the time he sits in front of his computer and does his homework.”
“It might be a good idea if I spoke with Dr. Quarenghi.”
“My husband’s in Rome.”
“Then when he returns.”
“Paolo is a very busy man. He works for the Ministry of Health. This entire affair has understandably irritated him considerably.” There was another movement of the nervous eye. She lit the cigarette with a large lighter in the form of a conquistador. “All my stupid fault, of course. I should never have made my silly accusations. I suppose I just can’t have been thinking clearly.”
“You take medication, Signora?”
“Not really.”
“Either you take medication or you don’t.”
“I used to.”
“But not now?”
She put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled, her eyes on Trotti.
“No sleeping pills?”
“Just the occasional one.”
There was silence.
Outside a wind was causing the plane trees to sway gently.
Trotti wanted to get away. To get out. Signora Quarenghi made him feel uncomfortable.
She spoke again. “I wanted to have a child, you see.”
Signora Scola looked up.
“I often felt that with a child, perhaps …”
“Yes?”
“Perhaps my husband and I would have been closer. You understand, Dr. Quarenghi and I aren’t very close. Perhaps children would have drawn us together.”
“What has stopped you?”
“I am forty-six, you see.”
“That’s not too late.” Signora Scola spoke softly.
“I was taking sleeping pills. There wasn’t really much else I could do, was there?”
“Do?”
“Sleep—I needed to sleep. Because as long as I was sleeping, I didn’t think about anything else. And most of the time I was here by myself. With just the maid for company. While Paolo’s in Rome to earn money for both of us.” Her wan smile went from Trotti to Signora Scola. “Paolo was very angry I made those silly accusations. I wanted to have a child and then I discovered that Carlo wanted to have children with that awful Englishwoman.” She added softly, “I thought I was in love with Carlo Turellini.” She tapped her chest. “On my own again. I’m a woman—and I need to be desired, I need to be wanted.”
Trotti asked, “Why an affair with another man?”
Simona Scola asked, “Why didn’t you adopt?”
Signora Quarenghi did not answer either question.
“If you really
wanted a child,” Trotti said, “why did you have an affair with another man?”
“My husband was living most of the time in Rome.”
“You could have joined him.”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t care for children. And he doesn’t want me in his bed.”
“So you had an affair with Turellini?”
The eyes suddenly blazed behind the cigarette smoke. “I wasn’t having an affair.”
“You wrote letters,” Trotti said. “According to various people, there was a liaison between you and Turellini.”
“A liaison? Of course there was a liaison. We were screwing, we were making love. We were friends. Carlo was good. He was good because he was like a little boy.” She started to laugh but she could not control the movement of her eye. “But there was no affair. There was no future. You think I didn’t realize that? I knew about the Englishwoman. I knew all about her. And I wasn’t jealous.” Her voice grew louder. “And I really don’t appreciate your making these insinuations. You’re in my house and it is not for you to insult me under my roof.”
Trotti held up a calming hand. “Nobody’s making any insinuations. We’re simply trying to get to the truth.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Like a deflated puppet, she fell back into her seat, the cigarette forgotten between her fingers. “Carlo’s dead, isn’t he? And I’m still here.”
“Even unnatural death matters, signora. If it didn’t, I’d be out of a job.”
“You haven’t done a very good job so far.”
“We’d’ve done an even worse job if we’d believed your accusations against your own husband.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps my judgment was unsound.”
“Perhaps?”
She had grown calm, like a child curled up against the dark, leather armchair. The Muratti smouldered between her pale fingers. “My husband wouldn’t murder anyone.”
“And now you accuse Mary Coddrington.” Trotti raised his eyebrows. “How do you expect us to place more importance on this accusation than on your earlier one?”
“She murdered him.” Signora Quarenghi inhaled deeply then folded her arms against her chest. She snorted smoke through her nostrils.
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s obvious.”
“There was no motive. Carlo Turellini and this Englishwoman were living together. She was going to have his baby. She was happy.”
“The bitch.”
“Harsh language, Signora Quarenghi.”
“Carlo didn’t love her.”
“That doesn’t mean Signora Coddrington murdered Carlo Turellini.”
“Of course she murdered him.”
“She had everything she wanted. A house, a job, security and the prospect of a child on the way. Why murder him?”
Suddenly, unexpectedly the woman sitting in the armchair started shouting. “She murdered him. She murdered him. Because she hated him. She didn’t like him. She wanted his money. But she didn’t want Carlo. She couldn’t stand Carlo.”
The voice had risen louder and louder.
Signora Scola glanced unhappily at Trotti.
Signora Quarenghi now stood up. She was gesticulating and there were traces of froth at the corner of her lips. “She couldn’t love him as I loved him. Of course she knew Carlo loved me. It was to spite me. Don’t you understand? Of course she wasn’t pregnant. That was just another of her clever little tricks.”
The Muratti cigarette had fallen to the floor.
“The English cow was jealous and it was to spite me that she killed him. To spite me, the stupid, scheming little bitch.”
The maid had reappeared. She carried a tray, a glass of water and a medicine bottle.
“To spite me, and now my dear sweet Carlo’s dead.” Then Signora Quarenghi started to sob.
50: Methuselah
SHE HAD PUT the sunglasses back into place. “I don’t believe her.”
Trotti raised an eyebrow as he turned to look at Signora Scola.
Her headache, if indeed there ever was one, had now disappeared. She was driving, leaning, forward slightly and holding the small wheel of the Fiat Seicento between her beige gloves. “Signora Quarenghi’s lying.”
Trotti asked, “How do you know?”
“You couldn’t see it was an act—the frothing at the mouth?”
“I appreciate your feminine intuition.” Trotti smiled and touched the sleeve of her coat. “My problem is I always work with men.”
“You used to work with the Ciuffi woman before she got herself killed.”
“What makes you think Signora Quarenghi was lying to me?”
“Like all men, Piero, you only see what you want to see.”
“All my fault. My daughter got me to buy a pair of glasses but I hate to wear them.”
She took her eyes from the road. They were invisible behind the sunglasses. “You see, you do have a sense of humor.” The corners of her lips moved upwards in a tentative smile. “Despite your advanced age and thinning hair.”
Trotti liked the way the soft skin of Signora Scola’s cheeks formed slight ridges of amusement. Wrapped in the large fur coat, she seemed almost fragile.
“Very rudimentary sense of humor at best. A peasant from the hills beyond the Po.”
“Quarenghi was playing with you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Piero.”
They were returning to the city and the wintry sun glinted on the lead plates of the cathedral roof. Beside the dome there was the emptiness where for over a thousand years the Civic Tower had once stood, between Duomo and Broletto. Like a tooth that had been removed—you grew to accept the change but you could not forget the loss and the disfigurement.
“You think Signora Quarenghi killed Turellini?”
“That’s not what the Carabinieri think. The paraffin test was negative—she hadn’t fired any gun that morning.” Signora Scola smiled. From where Trotti was sitting beside her, he saw the wrinkling at the corner of her eyes behind the dark lenses.
“What d’you think, Simona?”
“I’m not a policeman.”
“Then how do you know she was lying?”
“Because I’m a woman. And like all women, I use the same tricks to get what I want.”
“There’s no difference between you and Signora Quarenghi?”
“A difference of motives.”
“What are her motives?”
“I don’t know that, Piero.”
“What are yours?”
Signora Scola bit her lip, then, “You shouldn’t ask me.”
“Why not?”
“You may not care for the answer.”
“What’s the answer?”
She hesitated before answering. “We’re all the same. Women all want the same things.”
Trotti turned away and looked at the rice fields that were slowly being replaced by the spreading expansion of the university and its satellites—new housing, new shops, new services.
“We women can be quite ruthless.”
“I have a wife and a daughter,” he said. “I learned about female ruthlessness a long time ago.”
“Why do you always have to talk about your wife, Piero Trotti?”
He shrugged as if he had not heard her question. “A woman has three lines of attack to get what she wants.”
“Only three?”
“Her favorite method’s flattery. It works wonders—even with the worst misogynist.”
“You’re a misogynist?”
“I don’t hate women in particular, if that’s what you mean. My wife once told me I hate everybody.” He smiled. “You haven’t told me your motives.”
“What are the lines of attack women use?”
Trotti held up a finger. “The most efficient is flattery. A woman will tell you you’re a wonderful, wonderful man and her voice promises so much pleasure. The voice in the Garden of Eden.”
“You’ve been there?”
“For a very short time—just before my marriage.”
“You really are a misogynist.”
“If flattery doesn’t work, the woman then resorts to blackmail.”
“Blackmail?”
“And if blackmail doesn’t work, she retreats to the third and last ditch of war. That’s when the pots and pans start to fly.”
“Breaks diplomatic ties and recalls all her ambassadors?”
“But the strange thing is, Signora Scola …”
She kept her eyes on the road. “A minute ago you called me Simona.” She was smiling.
“A man can give in to a woman’s charm, a man can give in to her blackmail, he can even run up a white flag of truce when she brings out the heavy artillery—it doesn’t make any difference.”
“We always get what we want?”
“Of course you get what you want.”
“Then we’re nice to you?”
“Nice? A woman can never stop herself from despising a man who’s given in to her, to her silly, feminine whims.”
Simona Scola, thirty-two years old, with a degree in child psychology (110 marks, cum laude), beautiful, elegant and with a very wealthy husband, put her head back and laughed, almost taking the car into the back of a municipal bus.
“You said you knew nothing about women.”
“I know nothing about women.”
“And where does that place Signora Quarenghi, Piero?”
“Now tell me what your motives are, Simona.”
“You’ll find out in time.”
“Precisely what frightens me.”
“That woman was acting, Piero. You could see that.”
“What were her motives?”
“Acting because she wanted something from you.”
“What did Signora Quarenghi want from me?”
“You tell me.”
“To be left alone, I suppose.” Trotti shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Worse than her brother. More devious and even less honest … if that’s possible.”
Trotti ran a hand through his hair. “Her brother?”
Again Simona Scola laughed, and if Trotti had been listening to her laugh he would have found it pretty. Like clear water running through the pines of the Penice on a summer’s day.
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