But now there was no mistaking the fact that something inside the man had snapped. The death of Signora Rosa, the tata who had always been his entire family, constituted a devastating loss, and this, thought the brigadier, was all too understandable. No one grasped the proper weight of family in a man’s life more than Maione did, even a man as closed and reserved as the commissario.
He had been at the man’s side when it was necessary to take care of the formalities required for the transfer of Rosa’s corpse to Fortino, the Cilento town where both the woman and Ricciardi himself had been born and raised, and he had accompanied him to the train in a strange, tiny procession made up of Rosa’s niece, Nelide, who so resembled her aunt, Dr. Modo with his inseparable leashless dog that followed him like a shadow, and the dark silhouette of the widow Vezzi’s car. He remembered that scalding hot day, with an infernal sun beating down mercilessly. The blistering air seemed to stand still, and it was hard to take so much as a breath.
Dr. Modo had told him that poor Rosa hadn’t suffered, and that she had slid from sleep into death with serenity, watched over by Nelide who had never moved an inch from the old woman’s bedside the whole time. The doctor was fascinated by the silent force of that solid and homely young woman. Her permanently furrowed brow and her large nose, jutting above the brown fuzz on her upper lip, combined with the fact that she only expressed herself in dry proverbs, uttered through clenched teeth, and yet she had displayed an absolute dedication that, upon the death of her aunt, had transferred itself wholeheartedly to Ricciardi.
The commissario too had been close to his old tata all through her last days, save for a brief absence the night of her death, and yet he had never neglected his professional duties. Maione had worked beside him to solve the case of the professor of medicine who’d fallen from the window of his office at the general hospital, and he had seen no slackening in the legendary close attention that Ricciardi always devoted to his investigations, even though there was no missing the immense burden that was crushing his heart.
When he had returned from Cilento with Nelide, in the face of the brigadier’s polite questions he had replied curtly, saying that now Rosa rested in peace next to his own mother and everything had been taken care of; still, Maione sensed that something about him had changed.
He had always been a grim man, a man of few words, who only occasionally indulged in sudden, razor-sharp outbursts of irony. But now, in those eyes staring into empty space and that vacant expression, there was a new loneliness; a hopeless silence. Ricciardi gave him the shivers, since he’d returned to duty.
Nor was police work much help. Aside from the occasional theft, a few robberies with battery, and a brawl down at the harbor with a few men sent to the hospital, nothing significant had happened, and Maione hadn’t been able to rely on a challenging investigation to distract the commissario.
The brigadier, in a somewhat confused manner, was worried about Ricciardi’s mental health, and he even wondered whether he ought to be afraid of the commissario harming himself in some way. And so he took advantage of every excuse to go into his office: one time he’d bring him a cup of the terrible ersatz coffee that they made in the guardroom; another time he’d go to inform him about hallway gossip, which his superior officer commented upon with, at the very most, a distracted half smile.
Maione had noticed that Ricciardi never even went to eat a quick pastry at Gambrinus during the lunch break, as he’d used to do, and that in the evenings he lingered at headquarters to keep from having to go home. Now that’s a bad sign, he’d told Lucia, that’s a very bad sign. But she had reassured him. It’s just a difficult moment. It’ll pass. It always passes. His wife hadn’t mentioned it, but just then the ghost of the two years of silence that had separated them after Luca’s death had brushed past her face with its icy wings.
And that was why, the minute he set foot in police headquarters, Maione catapulted himself up the stairs: he wanted to make sure that the commissario was at his desk, safe and sound.
And he was surprised to see that, despite the early morning hour, there was already someone sitting on the bench in the hallway, waiting to be admitted.
IV
Ricciardi heard a knock at his office door. At that hour of the morning, it could be no one but Maione. He heaved a sigh and called out to come in.
Recently, the brigadier had become a little irritating. The excuses he invented to check whether the commissario was all right were clearly fatuous, and Ricciardi was less tolerant than usual. He understood that Maione was fond of him, and in his way he returned that feeling in full, but what he needed now was to be alone and think. And remember. Work didn’t comfort him and the presence of other people, even those few people toward whom he felt friendship, was only a source of disturbance. He didn’t know how to convey this feeling without being offensive, but if the brigadier kept it up, he was going to have to make himself clear well beyond the bounds of benevolence.
Maione entered, shutting the door behind him.
“Commissa’, buongiorno. How do you feel this morning? You’ve had something to eat, haven’t you?”
Ricciardi looked up from the report concerning a brawl that had broken out down at the harbor.
“Yes, Maione, don’t worry. Nelide takes care of everything, this morning at five she already had breakfast ready for me. Magnanno ven’a famme, she said. Whatever that means.”
Maione snickered, shaking his head.
“Folk wisdom, Commissa’. ‘Eating will bring you hunger’, or something along those lines. That young woman is fantastic.”
Ricciardi nodded.
“Which means there’s no reason to fret. My stomach is in good hands.”
“Whatever you say, Commissa’. Anyway, you must have gotten here quite early indeed, because outside there’s a person waiting who said she got here three quarters of an hour ago, but she’s still waiting for you. Since it’s eight o’clock now and you haven’t seen her, that means you’ve been in the office since at least seven o’clock.”
Ricciardi heaved an impatient sigh. “Excellent work, Raffaele. You could practically be a cop, at times. And just who would this person be?”
Maione threw his arms wide.
“A lady, Commissa’. She’s wearing a veil and she wouldn’t tell me her name. She insists she’ll speak only to you. Should I show her in?”
Ricciardi shrugged his shoulders.
“What else are we going to do, keep her out there to take the place of the usher? Certainly, show her in.”
Maione stepped out and came back in, leading the way for the lady with the veil. She was tall and slender and held a purse in her gloved hands. She was dressed in black and wore a light overcoat, well-made but short, out of keeping with the long dress, which looked slightly unfashionable.
She took a step forward, hesitantly, and then came to a halt, just inside the door.
Ricciardi rose to his feet, remaining at his desk. He gestured with one hand, pointing her to the chairs facing the other side of his desk.
“Please. Have a seat. You asked to see me, I am told.”
His tone had been rather brusque: he didn’t like people who covered their faces. The woman straightened her back and approached the desk, though without taking a seat. She turned her head ever so slightly toward Maione, who had remained off to one side, waiting to be dismissed. But Ricciardi was in no mood to take his guest’s discreet hint that she’d rather speak alone.
“Brigadier Maione, whom you’ve already met, works with me on all my official business. You can speak freely in his presence.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. The woman wondered whether she shouldn’t just turn and leave, then made up her mind and sat down. She put her purse in her lap and lifted the veil, finally showing her face.
Ricciardi was immediately certain that he’d seen her before. The refined features, with
a tiny, turned-up nose and an upper lip ever so slightly lifted to reveal a gleaming white set of teeth. Fierce, elongated eyes, calm and decisive, with dense eyebrows. The odd and remarkable color of her irises, an intense blue verging on purple. Ricciardi guessed she might be in her early thirties, though the expression on her face bespoke a suffering that made her look older. Even though she was pale and without makeup, she was definitely quite pretty.
Because the visitor gave no sign of wanting to break the silence, Maione said: “Signora, this is, in fact, Commissario Ricciardi, whom you asked to see. And you would be?”
The woman replied without taking her eyes off the eyes of Ricciardi, who was still standing: “I am Bianca Palmieri di Roccaspina. The Contessa of Roccaspina.”
Without meaning to, the commissario shot a glance at the worn gloves that were threadbare in spots and the satin handbag that was mended at the bottom. The dress and shoes were likewise in less than perfect condition. The contessa noticed his glance and compressed her lips, offended in spite of herself. In her violet eyes, there was a glint of fierce pride and melancholy.
Ricciardi sat down.
“Tell me, then, Contessa. To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”
Bianca whispered: “Don’t you remember, Commissario? We have met before. It was two years ago.”
Ricciardi furrowed his brow in an effort to bring up the circumstances in which they might have met, but nothing specific came to him. Suddenly, a gleam of recollection lit up his mind.
“Ah, certainly, now I recall. The Rummolo murder. The fortune-teller. I was in your home, for your husband. Is that right?”
“Of course, ’o Cecato,” Maione broke in. “The Blind Man. You went alone to interview the count, Commissa’. It was a Sunday, you remember? We turned the whole quarter inside out.”
A blind man—an assistito, as those with supernatural powers to foretell the numbers that would be chosen in the lottery were called—had been murdered. The Count of Roccaspina had been the last person to visit the victim and was therefore among the prime suspects. But that time, as it turned out, the killing hadn’t been a matter of money. It was a crime of passion. A case resolved in a hurry, that same day and right on the spot. If only they could all turn out like that, thought Ricciardi, and in his mind he saw once again a picture of the count as he’d seen him then, a man still in the prime of his life but devoured from within by the fever of gambling, his eyes reddened, disheveled, a walking stick to which he clung like a shipwrecked sailor on a wooden beam in the open seas. A threadbare, haggard figure, similar in a sense to that of the woman before him, but lacking her ferocity, lacking her pride.
The contessa nodded, calmly.
“Yes, Commissario. That’s right. One of my noble consort’s habitual companions, I’d have to guess. A grave loss for society, wouldn’t you say? But he was promptly replaced, make no mistake: first there was a hunchback, then a woman with a limp. In fact, even before that, a little girl with smallpox. What an absurd city this is.”
Her voice was nicely modulated, with no local accent of any kind, but there was no missing an undertone of anger, a festering malevolence. The encounter was gradually returning to Ricciardi’s memory: the count hadn’t been there, he had come in only later, and the woman had received the commissario in the largely bare living room of an aristocratic palazzo in unmistakable decline.
The dress, he noticed with a sense of baseless unease, looked like the same one she wore then.
“Now that we’ve recognized each other, Contessa, would you care to tell me what I can do for you?”
Bianca said nothing, continuing to hold Ricciardi’s gaze. There weren’t many capable of meeting the commissario’s green eyes without faltering or dropping their gaze, but she seemed able to do so without difficulty.
She took off her hat slowly, using both her hands. Her hair, tucked up in a bun, was a vivid blonde, with coppery highlights. Her long, fair neck was ornamented only by a black satin ribbon fastened with a brooch that looked to be made of silver. She wore no earrings.
Maione coughed softly, in embarrassment.
“Commissa’, if you don’t mind, I’ll go take a look at the officers’ duty roster, that way we can get the day started.”
“No, Maione,” Ricciardi replied without looking at him. “You can go afterward. Right now, let’s hear what the contessa has to tell us.”
He didn’t want to give the woman the satisfaction of a confidential interview. Many people in that city were of the opinion that an aristocratic title gave one the right to issue orders and expect them to be carried out without question, and that very opinion was reason enough for Ricciardi, born the Baron of Malomonte, to consider that no one enjoyed such a right.
The Contessa of Roccaspina clenched her jaw in a moment of well-concealed annoyance, then resigned herself.
“I’m here about my husband. He’s been arrested.”
Ricciardi arched his brows.
“Oh, really? And why is that? Something to do with gambling, I’d imagine.”
Maione wondered what could be driving Ricciardi to such pointless rudeness. Still, the woman gave no sign of detecting the sarcasm. The tone of voice with which she replied was, at least to all appearances, perfectly austere.
“No. It’s murder.”
The word landed in the room like a stone tossed into a pond. There was a moment’s silence, then Ricciardi’s tone of voice became decidedly more courteous.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Contessa. But you must have been directed to the wrong office, I’m not working on any case that . . . ”
The woman lifted one gloved hand, interrupting him.
“It’s not a recent case. My husband was arrested at the beginning of June. More than three months ago.”
Ricciardi exchanged a glance with Maione, who shrugged his shoulders.
“Contessa, I think this is more of a matter for lawyers than for the police, now that so much time has gone by. The investigation . . . ”
Bianca smiled sorrowfully and shook her head.
“There really wasn’t any investigation to speak of, Commissario. My husband was arrested immediately, even though he wasn’t found on the scene of the murder.”
“But that can’t be, Contessa! There’s always an investigation, I’m sure that . . . ”
“I’m telling you, there was no investigation. For the simple reason that my husband confessed that he had done it.”
V
Livia leaned forward and told Arturo, her chauffeur, to pull over and she’d get out at the corner. She felt like taking a walk. It was such a beautiful day.
The driver hesitated and feebly protested, which only made the woman laugh. She was greatly amused to see how the inhabitants of that city had a perception of it that clashed so sharply with the reality. To hear Arturo and her housekeeper Clara tell it, she ought to go nowhere without an armed bodyguard for fear of the evildoers, thieves, cutpurses, and cutthroats who were bound to attack her along the way, even in broad daylight and on heavily trafficked streets like this one.
In fact, she’d rarely felt as safe as she did there. Certainly, people were a little nosy and never left you to mind your own business, but they were likeable, affectionate, and it was impossible to feel lonely for even a second.
It meant a great deal to her, not to feel alone. In fact, loneliness had cruelly branded her life for so many years, while her husband was still alive. Indeed, especially while her husband was still alive: the great Arnaldo Vezzi, Il Duce’s favorite tenor; the singer who had been called the Voice of God by a prominent American music critic, after a memorable concert in New York; the unfaithful swine, murdered in a dressing room at the Teatro San Carlo by a woman he had seduced and then abandoned.
And she’d been alone afterward, too, even though she was at the center of a Roman social life that she found fa
tuous and empty, until she had decided to follow her heart by moving to that strange, song-filled city that abounded in light and shadows.
She stopped for a moment, inhaling to fill her lungs with the sweet-smelling air that rose from the sea. By now, it was the last ten days of September, but the weather showed no sign of turning wet and chilly. Her mother, in a phone call, had told her that it was raining cats and dogs where she lived in the Marche. And the night before, watching a newsreel at the movies, she had seen a very recent Fascist demonstration in the capital, and had noticed that the ladies were all wearing overcoats. But down here, even in the early morning hours, the sunshine was warm and soothing, and you could rely upon it to bring pleasure as it caressed your skin.
By the side of the road, standing next to two bags full to bursting, was a young man hawking his wares to passersby and to the women who lived in the tall apartment houses: bunches of grapes, each individual grape gigantic. It’s gold, not grapes, this is! he was shouting at the top of his lungs. Ooh, so lovely, solid gold, it’s pure gold!
He was a stunningly handsome young man, and he might have just stepped out of a gouache painted fifty years earlier, the kind of canvases that Livia admired on the walls of the drawing rooms she sometimes frequented. His hair was curly and dark, his workshirt was unbuttoned, revealing a tanned and hairy chest, he wore a pair of knee breeches and went barefoot; his eyes gleamed with laughter, his voice was full and stentorian. From many balconies up above housemaids leaned over, going through the motions of folding linen in the sunshine, but actually gazing raptly down at him.
Livia came into his field of view just as he was raising high a bunch of the fruit toward the sun, to show off its hue. The young man cut short the gesture and the shout with which he was calling his wares, only to clutch his chest theatrically with one hand, pretending to be thunderstruck at the sight of such loveliness.
Glass Souls Page 3