The Marshal Makes His Report

by Magdalen Nabb

  They had paused by the well, deep in conversation, not noticing that under the shadow of the colonnade Grillo the dwarf was watching them.

  ‘But surely,’ the Marshal said, ‘that was twenty-odd years ago?’

  ‘It was, but Catherine’s still finding stuff and she reckons it will take years of work yet to restore all the papers. Nobody’s a hundred per cent sure how much stuff was lost and those cellars are a labyrinth. You wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have believed that business of the family icons, either, if it comes to not believing things, not to mention the bloodthirsty tales, but I gather she gets her stories from the papers.’

  ‘Those and books, and hearsay, of course.’

  ‘I thought as much when I saw the Nazione.’

  ‘The Nazione?’

  ‘I saw it sticking out from under the cushion of her chair.’

  William’s eyes were bright with merriment. ‘All she reads in that rag are the births, deaths and marriages! Listen, you don’t have to go yet, do you? Can you spare a quarter of an hour? Let me fascinate you! You’ve got a lot to learn about this place. Come on.’

  The Marshal knew he ought to get back to his office, write that wretched HSA report and get this business off his hands. Had he only known it, this was his last chance of doing just that. He hesitated. He hated this house but it did have a sort of chilly fascination, and besides, he liked the company of this young man so different from himself. He did go as far as to look at his watch. Was it chance that made him decide to stay? That was the way it seemed, and yet, when he looked back afterwards it seemed as though he’d been treading a well-defined and determined path right from the very beginning, right from the moment when he’d stood looking down at Corsi’s dark-stained face. So perhaps it hadn’t been so important after all that he had thought to say, ‘I ought to get back’, and instead had said nothing but followed William’s smart Chaplin-like step back towards the studio.

  ‘ ’Evening, Marshal.’

  That was when he noticed that the dwarf was there. But he thought nothing of it. He followed William into the studio and closed the door.

  An hour later he was still reading, or rather, deciphering.

  ‘No . . . I can’t make it out.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Try this. It’s not complete but it will give you the gist. Catherine had it photocopied from the Maruccelliana Library. It doesn’t always help, but it can sometimes indicate that there’s a whole chunk of information missing which means a missing or misplaced page. Here . . . Skip all that stuff about Cosimo the Elder—1490 . . . Neri Ulderighi, there he is: let me . . .

  ‘ “In 1490, Neri Ulderighi decided to enlarge his Florentine house. He purchased the houses adjoining his medieval tower in the city centre and sent to Rome for a design of the façade and courtyard. The drawing he received, supposed to be by Raphael, was given to the master builder, Lapo Cinelli, for his estimate of the work. The drawing was never returned, Cinelli claiming that he had lost it. Neri applied to Lorenzo de’ Medici for help—” ’

  ‘Here, you see? This is from the letter you were trying to decipher:

  ‘ “Since the drawing is a very splendid thing and the artist has no time to make another and Your Highness knows that were I to apply to the courts they would only inflict a fine for the loss of a manuscript which avails but little against scoundrels.” ’

  The Marshal sat bemused as William perched on the edge of the worktable and read to him. ‘But did he—’

  ‘Wait . . . Lorenzo’s answer is lost but there’s a quote from it which proves that he did answer . . . Here it is:

  ‘ “Let the court send for him and the drawing be found.” ’ ‘There may not actually have been a complete letter to Neri, of course, just a note in the margin of some other orders or a mention of the business in a letter to someone else.’

  ‘And was the drawing found, then?’

  ‘Wait! The plot thickens. Listen to this:

  ‘ “Lorenzo’s intervention was to no avail. Cinelli insisted that the drawing was lost but that he remembered it well enough to proceed with the work, which he would do at a reduced cost in apology for the drawing’s being lost. Not long after work had begun, a rumour reached Neri that Cinelli was boasting of having tricked him and that a drawing by Raphael was worth much more than the reduction in his fee. Within three days of Neri’s hearing this, Cinelli was dead, murdered in the cellars where he had begun building and entombed within its walls. Cinelli’s son carried out the contract and the Palazzo Ulderighi was completed, but it is said that the son knew who had murdered his father and that it was he who carved the inscription on the cellar wall behind which Cinelli was buried:

  HERE IS AN END TO ALL MY WOES

  AND A BEGINNING OF YOUR OWN.

  ‘So it was true . . . The Marshal, who had sat as still and attentive as a well-behaved schoolboy during the reading, shifted in his chair and looked about him, bothered again by the lack of windows in these rooms. He liked to stare out of a window while he was thinking, though he stared without seeing what he was looking at. Here he felt constrained.

  William was still leafing through the photocopies.

  ‘It was true all right. The Ulderighi had more bad luck after that—oh, they always managed to stay in power by a system of alliance with the strong, that is, no real alliance to anyone or anything except themselves. They were at court when the Austrian Grand Dukes ruled Florence and even though they thoroughly disapproved of Cavour’s machinations for the unification of Italy, there they were at court again when Florence became the first capital of the kingdom of Italy. They’ve survived two world wars and the rise and fall of Fascism and here they still are. They’ve lost money, of course, what with taxation and having their neglected country estates confiscated by the new Rupublic. Even so, in that way they haven’t been bad survivors. The curse— and everybody regarded the Cinelli inscription as a curse—had to do with the succession.’

  ‘I only meant,’ the Marshal said, ‘that it was true what the old woman told us. The murder in the cellars. I didn’t think . . .’

  ‘You thought she was rambling, I imagine, but all of it was true and all of it attributed by chroniclers of the time to the Cinelli curse. They kept on losing their heirs. Francesco was the first of them.’

  ‘Francesco . . .’ The Marshal cast his mind back over the tata’s ramblings. ‘Ah, the one with the garland of spring flowers on his grave who had an accident of some sort, that one?’

  ‘That’s the one. He was the eldest son. There were two sons and Neri tried to marry Francesco to one of the Della Loggia family, a girl called Lucrezia. Francesco, if you remember, was the good-looking one, and the garland of flowers was what he wore for the wedding. It’s a good story . . . Wait, it must be here because it happened almost immediately after the building was finished. I remember seeing it. It begins “A marriage was arranged” . . . A marriage . . . Ah: “Neri Ulderighi had two sons . . .” this is it:

  ‘ “A marriage was arranged between Francesco and Lucrezia Della Loggia. On June 24th, the feast of St John, the patron saint of Florence, the handsome Francesco, dressed in white with a garland of flowers on his head, rode out of the Palazzo Ulderighi to his wedding. Outside the doors, drums were being beaten and silk flags tossed in his honour. As he rode out from the dark courtyard into the brilliant June sunshine, a flag spun out right in front of his white stallion’s head. The horse shied and reared and Francesco was thrown. His garlanded head hit the great stone portal and the Palazzo Ulderighi claimed its second victim. Many blamed the Cinelli curse but some thought that the flag-thrower was in the pay of certain families who were jealous of the combined influence of the Ulderighi and Della Loggia families at Lorenzo’s court.” ’

  ‘There you are, then.’ William shuffled the papers into a semblance of order and dropped them on the table. ‘The Cinelli curse in action. That’s why they married the poor girl off to the ugly, smelly brother who turned out
a bad ’un so that, according to the dear old tata, she couldn’t help but have his little girlfriend decapitated. Though I have my theory about why she defends the murderous Lucrezia. She looks so much like the present Marchesa that Tata gets them confused. I just wish Catherine were here because she’s got the keys. Anyway, when she gets back she’ll take you down to see the Cinelli inscription.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ the Marshal said, getting to his feet, ‘that I’ll need to—’

  He was interrupted by a very sharp knock at the door.

  ‘William! William, are you there?’

  It was Dr Martelli, surprised to find the door opened to her by the Marshal who was on his way out.

  ‘Oh. Have I interrupted . . .’

  ‘No, no . . . I was just going.’ He reached in his top pocket for his dark glasses.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked William, looking round the Marshal’s big shoulder.

  ‘That bloody woman!’ hissed the doctor.

  ‘Oops!’ William hurried her in and shut the door. ‘That courtyard has ears.’

  ‘This whole building has ears,’ said Dr Martelli, ‘and I suspect that awful Grillo but you can never catch him at it. He knows everything that’s going on on every floor but he can’t use the lift and I’ve never once seen him on the stairs—I must get back, I’ve a queue of patients, but as I had a message for you I came in now to give myself a minute to cool off. I cannot stand that Ulderighi woman any longer. She just tore a strip off one of my patients for leaving the big doors ajar. Would you believe it? A tiny little frail thing of eighty who couldn’t hope to shut those great doors without five people to help her. I can’t stand it! The cheek of her when there’s a porter there, paid for by us, who instead of looking after the doors is forever in fancy dress up there buttling!’

  She clenched her small fists and clapped them to her temples with a mock scream of genuine fury.

  William looked puzzled. ‘She’s surely not entertaining, not already.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say so, not entertaining. But I’ve seen a fleet of lawyers go up there while I’ve been letting my patients in and out. At least they looked like lawyers to me but some of them may have been bankers and did you see who was here early this morning?’

  ‘I was out at rehearsals.’

  She was telling it all to William but the Marshal could feel that it was directed at him. She wasn’t, he thought, a wicked woman, by any means. He rather liked her. But he was quite sure that she had an understandable desire to see the Marchesa get some sort of comeuppance.

  ‘Builders! Oh, not the actual workmen but there was an architect, the one who I used to see when I first moved in, and somebody from the Ministry of Fine Arts taking photographs and measuring. They’re obviously going to restart the work on the façade. So!’ She turned directly to the Marshal now. ‘I hope that report of yours turns out the way she wants it, because it looks as if she’s already spending the insurance money.’

  ‘No,’ William said, ‘there’d be no need of that. The Corsi inheritance is something enormous. She can restore the whole place now if she wants to. Hugh was telling me that yesterday. The insurance money can’t matter to her but the scandal would.’

  ‘Do you think they can have read the Corsi will so soon?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Not without my report,’ the Marshal said. And they hadn’t, now he thought about it, given him a deadline. Not that they should, but in a case like this it was surprising they hadn’t tried.

  ‘She’ll have no trouble borrowing on an inheritance like that. Flavia, I gave the Marshal some tea, though he didn’t like it. Can I give you a cup?’

  ‘God, no! My patients! I’m going—oh, I came to ask you to tell Catherine if she does get back this weekend to come round to me on Monday evening about six, not in the morning. I’ve cancelled everything in the morning so I can have a long weekend away. You won’t forget?’

  ‘I’ll write it down—are you going too?’ This to the Marshal, who was adjusting his hat as Flavia Martelli hurried back to her patients.

  ‘I must get back.’ There were a lot of things in his head, images rather than ideas, that he wanted to sort out by himself.

  ‘But you will come back and meet Catherine? And I wanted you to come to the theatre—wait.’ He fished in his pockets until he found what he wanted. ‘There you are. Two free tickets so your wife could come.’

  ‘That’s very nice of you but . . .’ He stared at the tickets before putting them inside his black notebook. ‘Didn’t you say . . . Well, won’t it be in English?’

  William’s face fell. ‘You don’t understand any English?’

  The Marshal’s face fell too and he reddened a little.

  ‘Well, a word or two, you know. Good-morning and that sort of thing . . .’ But he recognized the expression on William’s face. He’d seen it before on his own little boy Totò’s face when the Marshal hadn’t been free to go and watch some little effort they’d put on at school. So he said, ‘My wife does a bit better than me . . . and then there’ll be the costumes and so on. I’m sure we’ll enjoy it.’

  He’d done the right thing. William produced a pro-gramme with a synopsis of the action in Italian. It was, he explained, all geared to people learning English.

  ‘I meant to give a ticket to Flavia—Dr Martelli—but she was so steamed up about the porter I forgot. Still, if she’s going away for the weekend . . .’

  ‘She certainly gets steamed up,’ the Marshal commented, dabbing at the bridge of his nose with a big white handkerchief ready to put on his glasses.

  ‘Well, you can’t blame her. I think she gets a lot of stick one way and another. Anyway, she’s right about the porter, he should see to the door instead of playing the butler.’

  ‘I’m surprised he doesn’t mind himself. He didn’t look too comfortable when I met him up there, yet he hadn’t a wrong word to say about the Marchesa.’

  ‘Ha! I bet he hadn’t—have you seen their son?’ William had been holding the door ajar but he shut it again as he said this.

  ‘Well, I haven’t met him . . .’

  ‘Looks like the side of the cathedral only bigger.’

  ‘He plays in the football tournament, I gather.’

  ‘And could do as the prize if they painted his toenails gold and put a garland of flowers round that great neck. The best thing to do when you see him approach,’ said William, lowering his voice, ‘is . . . Run away! That’s what I do. However, I’m small and sensitive with it. Now the point about the porter’s buttling is this: their bonny bouncing baby—his name is Leo but his nickname, if you’ll believe it, is Baby—has had a spot of bother now and then with the forces of law and order. I don’t know all the details but there was one incident that got into the papers. He was peaceably slicing people up with a broken bottle in some club or other and when the police arrived and interfered, with his game, he must have lost his temper. Anyway, whether in temper or just playfulness, he knocked their heads together, took their staffs and used them to break up their squad car. Bit naughty, eh?’

  ‘So he has a criminal record?’ The Marshal was fishing for his notebook.

  ‘Ah no!’ William wagged his finger and grinned. ‘Ah no, no, no. Baby hasn’t got a criminal record because if Baby had a criminal record he wouldn’t be able to play in the nice football tournament and playing in the football tournament is the thing that Baby likes best. So these things have to be hushed up. Sh! Not a word.’

  ‘I see. The Marchesa.’

  ‘The Marchesa. So if she wants her porter to dress up as a monkey and swing across the roofs he’s going to do it to keep his little gorilla out of the nick.’

  ‘And the gorilla himself might . . .’

  The Marshal stopped. William’s pitted face had turned pale. The Marshal put a hand out to steady him. ‘Here, sit down. I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

  William did sit down. ‘You haven’t seen him. He really is frightening and if he had something to
do with Corsi’s death and I put you on to it, they’ll all know by this time!’

  ‘How could they know? They know I’m here, but I’ve been to see everybody, not just you.’

  ‘Grillo!’

  ‘He saw us come in here, but even so . . .’

  ‘Catherine found out. He always knew everything and she found out—’ He jumped from his chair and pulled at a little brass handle on the back wall. ‘It’s locked.’ But a noise as faint as a mouse in a wainscot followed his words.

  ‘I see,’ the Marshal said. It was normal in all such great houses to have, in some discreet corner, a servant’s door camouflaged with frescoes to blend in with the wall and well away from the room’s real entrance. These tiny doors led off a separate staircase so that the servants need not be seen except when absolutely necessary. ‘Have all the rooms on the courtyard got service doors?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Just on this side, chiefly so that Grillo can get from his lair to the gun room next door to this. You can bet your life he was listening in.’

  ‘Where else can he get to from his passage?’

  ‘Out into the street, of course, through the old tower entrance and up into the tower itself to look after Neri’s needs. I think into the Ulderighi apartments as well. There’s bound to be a door connecting the new part of the building with the tower at some level.’

  ‘Yes . . . yes, there is.’ The Marshal remembered his first visit, going ‘up there’ and the porter’s wife returning with the medicine.

  ‘All those stairs . . .’

  She had gone by some back route, not by the main staircase. The Marshal’s face had taken on a heavy blind look.

  ‘Do you think I’m in danger from that brute?’ William wasn’t joking any more.

  The Marshal only stood there, solid, unseeing and silent.

  ‘Do you?’

  But the Marshal still didn’t answer. He turned slowly, adjusted his hat and opened the door.

  ‘Of course if I were as big as you and had a uniform . . .’

  William’s voice followed him softly across the music-filled courtyard. It was only the ballet music now and a woman repeating, angrily, to the rhythmic thumping of a sharp object: