‘Do you think so? Do you really think so?’
‘Well, I’m only giving you my opinion.’ There was no getting away from it. He really wasn’t quite right in the head and this childlike trust in his burning eyes, evident even in the half light, irritated the Marshal. It wasn’t normal and it upset him. That, too, may have contributed to the way things went afterwards.
‘Well—’ Neri clasped his large hands together and began squeezing them rhythmically—‘I’m glad you see it like that and yet, if I’d opened the door at once, my— she wouldn’t have said those things, not in front of me. I’m sure she wouldn’t, and then my father would have lived.’
‘What did she say to him?’
‘They were quarrelling about divorce. They had before, more than once, but this time my father had made up his mind and how he did it was up to her. If she wouldn’t agree he would use Hugh Fido’s name— you see! That was my fault, too, because he would never have known but for—’
‘What answer did she give him?’
‘She laughed in his face. Sometimes, when she’s really angry she laughs. It can be very frightening.’
‘Were you frightened that night?’
‘Yes, I was. There was something—I don’t know— something unreal about the quarrel. Of course, now I know . . . It was unreal because she—’
‘Are you all right?’
The Marshal leaned forward to peer at him closely. The glazed look caused by the drugs had gone but he looked ill now, perhaps the strain of telling this was too much for him. But then, how else was he to unburden himself?
‘It’s my heart . . . there are some pills I should take but it doesn’t matter—He told her then. He told her that Catherine was expecting a child and I understood. I wish I could have talked to him. I wish I’d had the chance to tell him that I understood.’ He was still squeezing his hands in anguish.
‘It’s always the way,’ the Marshal said, ‘when someone dies. We think of the things we never said. I felt that way when my mother died.’
‘Did you?’ Neri’s voice was soft, wondering. ‘But she didn’t die the way my father . . .’
‘No, no, she was sick. But you feel it just the same when they’re gone.’
‘I’ve talked to him in my prayers but I can’t reach him. I haven’t even a memory of him, of us together. I was always sick and he was so busy. But once . . .’ He stood up shakily, looking about him, his hands still gripped together. ‘Once when I’d been very sick he came to see me and brought me something . . .’ He went to his bedside cupboard and took from it his father’s present. It was a news magazine. The date was the November of four years ago. The Cellophane wrapping was unbroken. ‘He thought of me, you see, and brought me this and said, “It might cheer you up to read what’s going on in the outside world.” It was a kind thought, don’t you think?’
‘Very.’ The Marshal recognized the kind thought as being Fiorenza’s but it was touching that Buongianni had tried to follow her advice. ‘You never did read it, though?’
‘Oh no. I much preferred to keep it intact and now I’m very glad I did. It’s something to remember instead of remembering the sight of him up there, the sight of him—’
‘Try and keep calm. You’ll feel better when you get it off your chest. How did the quarrel end?’
‘He said that Catherine had gone to England to think things over but that he intended to go after her the following day, because on no account did he want her to—to not have the child, and then—that was when she started screaming with laughter and she told him that he could save himself the journey because his—his tart was right here . . .’ Neri’s voice was reduced to a hoarse whisper, as if the words hurt him physically. Then it became harsh and it might have been Bianca Ulderighi herself speaking, watching what had been her husband crumple before her eyes.
‘Just what she deserved. As she was offering her services I found her two suitable clients, people on her own level, and if they accidentally broke her neck there was no harm done. Where are you running to? There’s no need for you to interfere. I’ve seen to everything. They put her body into Cinelli’s tomb—I thought of that. And what’s so amusing is that instead of Cinelli’s bones in there we found those of a dog that dissolved into dust at a touch! So much for the curse. So you see it’s all settled. There will be no divorce.’
Neri paused, breathing deeply, searching for his own voice.
The Marshal shuddered as though Bianca Ulderighi were in the room with them. He spoke loudly himself to dispel the sinister atmosphere. ‘Is that where he went when he went down in the lift? To the cellars?’
‘Yes, I think so. I didn’t watch him. I’d been behind the door all that time and then when everything was silent I opened it. She was standing just as he’d left her, very erect, her head high. She looked very serene, almost smiling, and I thought that none of it could be true, that now she would tell me that it had all been a cruel joke to frighten my father. We’ve—we were always very close. She never left my side when I was sick, and she used to tell me everything. So I waited.
‘Then I realized that she wasn’t even seeing me. I was right there at the door facing her and she went on standing there, smiling and smiling . . .’
Neri lifted his grief-stricken face to the Marshal’s.
‘I’ve thought about it so much and I’ve prayed. I’ve prayed for him and for what he didn’t do.’
‘I understand,’ the Marshal said. ‘He intended to kill your mother and didn’t. She told us that.’
‘He came up my staircase, Marshal, not in the lift. He came up my staircase and only when he didn’t find me in my bed did he run back down and go through the door where he found us together. I don’t know why he didn’t shoot both of us then. Now that you’ve told me about Catherine’s letter I wonder if that—She cared about me.’
‘What she said was that he cared about you.’
‘In any case I’ve forgiven him for what he wanted to do because I can understand. He must have suffered terrible anguish, I know that. Father Benigni insists that suicide is as much a sin as murder and I know he must be right, but God will forgive him because he suffered so much, I believe that.’
‘Did he go up to the roof then?’
‘Yes. I think . . . I think it was just to get away from us. I ran after him but it was too late. He was stronger and faster and I couldn’t keep up.’
‘But your mother could surely—’
‘Oh no. No. She didn’t move. When I came down to tell her she was standing exactly as I’d first found her. She was still smiling. I told her he was dead and all she said to me was, “Go back to bed.” I said I can’t carry him, not by myself. We can’t leave him up there. I’ve got him off the parapet but I can’t carry him. What can I do?’
‘Go back to your room. Wash yourself.
‘She was still smiling. It was still as though she couldn’t see me. As I went away I heard her telephoning someone. I suppose she had my father taken down to the gun room. I heard them a long time afterwards, I heard them on my stairs dragging . . .’
The Marshal’s ear caught the sound of a siren. He went to the window. The ambulance was coming in. There was a lot of noise, voices, instructions, but it was spent and distorted when it reached this height.
‘I must go down.’
‘I’ve never spoken to her since.’ Neri’s face was composed, his eyes focused on some faraway point visible only to himself.
‘I must go down,’ the Marshal repeated. ‘I’ll send Grillo up to you.’
When he reached the door he heard Neri remark quietly, ‘I was right, wasn’t I? I said they’d make me do it in the end and they have.’
The Marshal looked back over his shoulder, hesitating. Neri had his back to the door. He might have been addressing the Marshal or only an idea of the Marshal. In any case he didn’t turn. ‘She was in that little box. And now I’ve done it. I’ve destroyed her.’
‘I’ll send Grillo up,’ the
Marshal said again because he didn’t know what else to say.
The left hand and arm were folded beneath the trunk and the right arm outstretched. (See enc. 1 Photographic file.)
Though the square of sky above was still pale turquoise, no light by then penetrated the courtyard and the atmosphere was tense and subdued now the fuss of the ambulance’s arrival had died down. The Marshal had been right about the journalists. The magistrates were still down in the cellars and once they came up the press would surely be evicted, but in the meantime they were huddled together under the colonnade near the old tata’s door, smoking to keep their spirits up in the gloom. They’d get a fright all right if she opened up and attacked them, but no doubt she heard nothing, locked in to her own icon-lit world by her deafness.
He found Lorenzini talking to one of the ambulance men and gave him instructions as to the discreet removal of the body because of William.
‘Then you don’t want him to identify?’
‘I think I’ll ask Dr Martelli. She was her patient.’
‘Right, I’ll tell them—’ Lorenzini interrupted himself and caught the Marshal’s arm. ‘Look who’s arriving.’
Someone behind them, probably one of the journalists, whispered, ‘The Marchesa.’
She was dressed, very elegantly, in deep mourning. She was followed at an almost imperceptible distance, by the chief public prosecutor. Inside the gate she rang the bell for the porter, then walked towards the central well and paused. She looked at the ambulance and said something in an undertone to the chief public prosecutor. The porter came hurrying up to her, buttoning his jacket. Without looking at him, she said, ‘When these people have finished, go down and see how much damage they’ve done.’
She saw the Marshal. She looked him straight in the eyes. She didn’t see the shrouded stretcher appear behind the ambulance. Then the dwarf began to scream, brief staccato screams not of fear but of rage. The Marshal ran to the entrance of the tower, knowing what the dwarf’s rage meant. The Marchesa and all the extraneous people in the courtyard gazed after him. He pounded up the stone stairs, round and up, up and round, never pausing for breath, his heart fit to burst and yet he knew that he would be too late and the hand that reached and grasped at the rope was sweating and sliding.
He overtook the dwarf quite near the top. He was still hauling himself up by the force of his arms and chest. His tiny legs had almost given out completely and he no longer had the breath to scream rage at his impotence. Tears were mixed with sweat on his streaked face and breathless incomprehensible curses issued from him. When the Marshal had got past him he slumped down on to the stairs, still clinging to the rope.
The turret was empty. The Marshal stopped, holding his chest and closing his eyes at the searing pain in his lungs. Above him the turquoise sky was deepening to midnight blue and the first star shone peacefully. It never occurred to the Marshal that Neri would have made an attempt at last to leave the Palazzo Ulderighi as his father had seemed to do. He knew before his slow steps reached the wall, before his big hands touched the warm stones of the parapet, that Neri would be a huddled heap by the well at his mother’s feet. Slowly, he leaned over to look down on the death he had failed to prevent. Slowly, the first firework drew its soft glittering design across the sky in honour of San Giovanni, the patron saint of Florence. On the night of June 24th.
The cadaver presented injuries to the head and the right hand. (See enc. 2)
The right hand had been broken. Probably from hitting the well, but the Marchesa ignored this as she had ignored the crushed head. She had been distressed by the superficial grazes on the hand and had called repeatedly above the noise of the fireworks for water and bandages. When the ambulance men tried to get near with a stretcher she became angry.
‘Can’t you see he’s sleeping? He always did sleep face down . . . I used to worry so much but the doctors . . . Why isn’t there water? Bring me a bandage. For God’s sake, can’t anyone see that he’s hurt his hand!’
In the end they had been forced to bandage the dead hand. Then she allowed herself to be led away by the chief public prosecutor. ‘I told you,’ she said, ‘that in time he’d come back to me.’ She was smiling, her face intermittently lit by the blue, red and green explosions above her.
The Marshal never saw her again. She was to die many years later in a clinic in Switzerland. She never regained her reason and nothing ever again disturbed her absolute serenity.
The cadaver was removed on the authorization of the substitute prosecutor Dr Mauro Maurri at 22.25 and transported by an ambulance of the Misericordia to the Medico-Legal Institute to be detained at the disposition of the competent authorities.
This morning’s interview with the chief public prosecutor and substitute prosecutor Maurri had been brief. They had come full circle and arrived at yet another HSA report.
Nevertheless, their attitude to the Marshal this time was very different. All of them knew that, even should she regain her reason, which was unlikely, Bianca Maria Corsi Ulderighi Della Loggia would never be prosecuted. The Marshal knew everything and could do nothing. The expert lawyers of Tiny and Leo would have their way with the case. The difference was that the Marshal was treated with respect instead of disdain; he was being implored, not threatened. In the circumstances it was perhaps unnecessarily wicked of him to go away without offering any comment, to let them sweat it out until his written report arrived. It would arrive soon enough. It was all but finished. And it was, after all, the only satisfaction he would have out of the whole business, this letting them wait for his decision. They would never know he had reached it without any reference to them and that annoyed him. Perhaps to Captain Maestrangelo he could explain, but then, he wasn’t so good at explaining things so it was probably better not to try. Only he would ever know what was in his head at this moment. A twilit image of a young man dying in an old man’s body, mourning the loss of what he had never known. Another, happier image of a small freckled girl who didn’t look like anybody and on whose frail shoulders the entire Ulderighi inheritance would fall. The Marshal had great hopes of Fiorenza Corsi. If she didn’t sell the place, which was likely, she would fill it, with animals or ballerinas or her numerous children, or at any rate with life. And he would lighten her burden to the extent in his power. The Palazzo Ulderighi had claimed yet another victim but the Marshal had the last word. His two plump fingers typed doggedly on to the end of the page.
. . . that in the presence of the undersigned, Neri Corsi Ulderighi Della Loggia, in attempting to observe the events taking place in the courtyard below, either through an attack of the chronic malady from which he suffered or through loss of balance, accidentally fell to his death.
His tongue protruded slightly from the corner of his mouth as he concluded with the standard phrase.
Referred in accordance with the obligations incumbent on my office—
MARSHAL IN CHIEF
STATION COMMANDANT
(Salvatore Guarnaccia)
The Marshal Makes His Report Page 21