Glass Souls

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  She would have been very pretty, thought Maione, had it not been for the expression of profound sorrow that appeared in her eyes. Poor little thing. Before Maione’s eyes there passed in succession the faces of his daughters and the face of little Benedetta, whom he thought of as his own every bit as much as the other girls. A long shiver ran down his back: how often it was that a dead person became little more than a puzzle to be solved for someone in his line of work; all too often they simply forgot about the family and the sorrow that death left behind it.

  The girl spoke in a harsh voice.

  “Then we need to help them, Mamma. Because the man who ruined our lives must be made to pay.”

  Ricciardi cleared his throat and addressed Costanza.

  “You have another child, don’t you, Signora?”

  “Yes, Antonio. He’s twelve years old. He’s away at boarding school now. We preferred . . . that is, I preferred to send him away before school started, in order to keep him far away from . . . from all this.”

  “That night, I’m assuming you were all at home. What time did you see your husband for the last time? Did he come to say goodnight to you, or . . . ”

  “I brought him a glass of milk and told him that I was going to bed. It was ten thirty, or maybe a quarter to eleven, I didn’t look at the clock. I’d read a book in the living room, then I’d dozed off. When I woke up, I just assumed that he was still working, and in fact he was.”

  Ricciardi spoke to the girl.

  “What about you, Signorina? Did you see him afterward, or before?”

  Carlotta shrugged her shoulders.

  “I’d been asleep for at least an hour when my mother went to bed. I went in to kiss Papa goodnight, as I do every evening, and then I went to my bedroom. I sleep in the same room with my brother, and it usually takes him a while to fall asleep, though once he does, nothing can wake him up. He always wants me to read him something. I remember that recently I had been reading him Treasure Island. After he fell asleep, I dropped off too.”

  Maione, with the expression of someone compiling a questionnaire, asked, while looking at his notebook: “Excuse me, Signora, you said that the bedrooms were in that direction. Are they far away?”

  Costanza pointed to the closed door.

  “Behind that door is a short hallway, a living room, and then the children’s bedroom and our own . . . my own. Excuse me, I’m still not used to it.”

  Ricciardi saw the armor that the woman had constructed for herself begin to give way, and felt pity for her.

  “Signora,” he asked, “we read in the police reports that the day before the murder the Count of Roccaspina had an argument with your husband, here in your home. Could you tell us what happened?”

  The woman stared into the empty air in front of her.

  “It was in the afternoon. This wasn’t the first time that . . . that he had come here. They had met at the yacht club. Ludovico, out of pure fellow feeling, had loaned him some money, but when the repayments came due he hadn’t been able to settle up, and so my husband had offered a series of extensions. I know that because I gave him a hand keeping the ledger books and I saw the transcriptions and the extensions.”

  “Who was at home?” asked Ricciardi.

  “Me, the housekeeper, and the chauffeur. The children were at school. He had no appointment; Ludovico usually warned me if he was expecting anyone.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I didn’t see him arrive, my housekeeper let him in. After a few minutes though I heard him shouting, followed by my husband’s voice. I walked toward my husband’s study, because I was worried, but before I could make up my mind to go in and find out what was happening, the door flew open and he stormed out. He was clearly quite upset. He didn’t even speak to me: he just left.”

  “Miserable coward,” the young woman murmured through clenched lips.

  “And you didn’t hear what they said to each other, Signo’?” asked Maione.

  “No, it didn’t last long. A couple of sentences, no more than that. I went in to Ludovico’s office to see if he was all right, and he was calmly writing. I asked him what had happened, but he just shrugged his shoulders and said to me: ‘No, it was nothing, absurd things.’”

  Ricciardi repeated: “Absurd things? Is that all?”

  “That’s all. My husband never liked to talk about his work meetings.”

  The commissario asked: “Were there a lot of people who owed your husband money? Did he have a lot of arguments like that one?”

  Before the woman had a chance to reply, her daughter hissed: “It seems like the one standing trial here is my father. What are all these questions for? That bastard murdered my papa, and he even confessed. He’s ruined our lives, he’s put us in a situation where it’s unclear how my brother and I are going to be able to survive, and you come in here and ask us, four months later, if anyone else had come to . . . ”

  “Signorina,” said Ricciardi very seriously, “we know very well that Roccaspina confessed to the murder. But in the course of a trial, the counsel for the defense has the right to set forth alternative theories of events, and the hypothesis of another guilty party is usually the principal one.”

  The young woman held the commissario’s gaze with fierce pride. Only her quivering lip betrayed her extreme youth.

  “But the confession is a piece of definitive proof, don’t you think? That damned killer told us in excruciating detail exactly what he did, right here in this room.”

  “A confession can be retracted until the very last moment. Perhaps the magistrate sent us here precisely to prevent such an eventuality.”

  The mother broke in determinedly.

  “In any event, we’ve told you everything we know, what little that might be. One sure thing, Commissario, is that my husband is dead. And that a man admitted to having killed him, explaining how and why. For the world at large, the case is closed.”

  The daughter, looking at the desktop with eyes brimming over with tears, added in a low voice: “For the world at large, maybe. But for me, it will never be closed. Never.”

  She reached into the pocket of her dress, pulled out a handkerchief, and pressed it to her mouth, then she turned and hurried away. Maione shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the way he always did when he felt ill at ease.

  Costanza suddenly said, perhaps mainly speaking to herself: “I’ll never be able to thank God enough that my children didn’t have to see him, lying in his own pooling blood. Maybe they’ll be able to find peace, at least.

  “I certainly never will.”

  XXI

  Let’s get moving, thought Nelide. Let’s get moving. L’acqua ca nu’ camina, feti, still water stinks.

  In truth, you could say anything about Nelide except that she lazed around. She always found something to do, and if she couldn’t she’d come up with something, or she’d resume the round of household chores, rewashing things that had already been washed, polishing things that had already been polished, ironing things that had already been ironed. She was driven by an appalling natural energy, further enhanced by a fear of failure and her youthful age.

  Though actually, to look at her, it’s not as if it was all that easy to guess her age. Stout, solid, and massively built, short but broad-shouldered and with extremely powerful arms that were just slightly longer than normal; a wide, short neck, an irregular face with a pair of bright, dark eyes, narrow lips topped by an unmistakable fuzz; bristly chestnut hair pulled back very tight into a bun and covered by a bright white cap. Those who had known and admired Rosa’s frank wisdom recognized her features: Nelide resembled her closely. She however knew that she was only seventeen, and she knew that she was unequal to the task to which she’d been assigned.

  Carefully arranging the ingredients for dinner on the kitchen table, the young woman heaved a sigh. ’A merola ce
cata, quann’è notte face ’u niro, she thought, the blind blackbird makes its nest at night.

  When her poor aunt had started to fall ill and realized that she didn’t have long left for this world, she had moved up the schedule and summoned her niece to her side in order to complete an education that would have required a great many more months yet to come.

  Rosa had been a crucial point of reference for all the numerous members of the Vaglio family. They all worked on the vast landholdings of the Ricciardi di Malomonte family, running the estate with absolute competence and rectitude. They were responsible for managing the farmhands, the sharecroppers, and the shepherds who used the fields and meadows, the hillsides and the fruit orchards that prospered around the castle, further south in Fortino, in the lower Cilento. And they were all by and large replacable, as long as they remained honest. All of them, except for the one who looked after the Baron Malomonte himself. The person who was in charge of the tenuous, fragile relationship with the man who was the owner of the entire operation but showed an utter lack of interest in that fact.

  ’U Pateterno manna ’a frisa a chi nun tene ’i rienti, someone might well have said, God gives bread to those who have no teeth. And there were those among the farmhands who, jokingly around the fire, would say it every so often, referring to Ricciardi. But they’d say it under their breath, lest they be overheard by any of Rosa’s countless brothers and sisters, or any of her many nieces and nephews. Because the veneration, the devotion of the Vaglios toward the barons of Malomonte was so slavish and doglike that they refused to admit any negative commentary.

  The masters had never bothered with their own wealth, this was a known fact, accepted for generations by now. They had an inclination for more immaterial things; they loved books, sentiments, passions. The concrete work, managing their goods and assets and tending to them, fell to the Vaglios. So it had always been, and so it was meant to be. Still, it was complicated.

  The problem wasn’t cooking, washing, and ironing, pursuits in which Nelide was even better than Rosa, because she possessed an unequaled strength and aptitude for hard work. Si ’a fatica fusse ’na cosa bbona, la facissiro li prieviti, as the saying went where she came from, if hard work was enjoyable, then priests would do it. But to her, hard work was nothing. The difficult thing, for her, was to interpret, translate, and report. To read the expression on the face of that slender, skinny man, whose feverish eyes were such an absurd color, a hue reminiscent of the mountainside in springtime, when the sunlight at dawn begins to light up the new green leaves, or else the depths of the little lakes that form after a heavy downpour. A man who, on the one hand, inspired fear in her and who, on the other hand, prompted the same desire to protect him that had driven her aunt. Her task, she sensed, was to ensure that his life was untroubled, to the extent that she was able.

  But she was seventeen years old, she was just a girl. How would she succeed in her task with no one to instruct her?

  For dinner she planned to make ciauledda. This was the ideal time of year for it, the necessary vegetables all attained ripeness at the start of that month. Of course, she’d send for the ingredients that could be preserved from her village, both so that she could be sure that they were genuine and because that way she saved money. This had been Rosa’s first precept, ensure that the large pantry was always packed full, and never use products whose provenance wasn’t certain, unless to do otherwise proved absolutely necessary. And so, every three months, a cart set out from Fortino, piled high with all manner of nonperishable provisions.

  To make ciauledda, though, she needed fresh vegetables, and Nelide had ventured out to buy them from the vendors in the neighborhood. Chi face ra sé fa pe’ tre, it’s true. If you do it yourself, you do it for three, the saying goes. But you can’t always follow that rule.

  She’d gotten into line at the stall of one vendor who was yelling more than all the others, surrounded by women who were laughing and chattering. She had supposed that it was because of the quality of his merchandise, and then she had realized that those foolish hens actually only wanted to attract the notice of the vendor, who was a dark-haired young man, with curly locks and big eyes, who talked and talked and laughed loudly. She had just turned to leave when the vendor called after her.

  “Hey, lovely Signorina, where do you think you’re going? You won’t find Tanino’s vegetables anywhere else!”

  The foolish hens surrounding him had turned in surprise, unable to believe their ears: handsome Tanino, also known as ’o Sarracino, the forbidden dream of all the marriageable young women of Santa Teresa, to say nothing of a great many married women, was calling out to that freak of nature?

  Nelide had stopped, then she had slowly turned around. She had leveled her eyes directly into Sarracino’s and had replied: “I don’t waste time. I work. Good day to you.”

  Tanino had been left frozen in place, with a smile plastered on his face, and in the sudden silence that had ensued, he had murmured, in an offended tone: “Why, what are you saying, that I’m not working? Look here, these are the finest vegetables in the quarter, and they sell like hot cakes! Don’t you believe me?”

  Nelide had furrowed her brow and imperceptibly ducked her head into her broad neck. She was the very picture of mistrust.

  “Terra comme lassi, usu comme truovi,” she murmured under her breath, different places have different ways. “But where I come from, the vegetable vendors sell vegetables and the charlatans bark their wares. Have a nice day.”

  And she’d turned on her heel and left, while a pretty serving girl laughed raucously, telling poor Tanino who stood there, openmouthed: “Sarraci’, you’ve finally found someone who can put you in your place!”

  Now, though, Nelide was gazing perplexed at onions, bell peppers, eggplants, zucchini, and potatoes arrayed before her like an army awaiting orders. She didn’t like those vegetables. They lacked personality. And the one thing that ciauledda demanded was that each individual ingredient maintain its specific identity, lest the dish turn into a shapeless, flavorless mass. Perhaps she should have given a chance to that charlatan who claimed to be a vegetable vendor.

  Zi’ Ro’, she thought, and what would you have done?

  She had developed a habit of talking to Rosa. A little because she was asking for help, and a little to keep from feeling all alone in that apartment that, by her standards, was enormous and deserted.

  Nu’ mangià cucozza ca ti cachi, nu’ passà lu mari ca t’annichi, don’t eat pumpkins or you’ll get diarrhea and don’t cross the sea or you’ll drown. Her aunt’s reply reached her loud and clear, as if she had been sitting on her usual chair, her powerful pudgy hands clasped in her lap as she watched her work.

  Nelide was pragmatic and unshakable. To her, all that existed was what she could feel and see, and she accepted it without discussion and without asking too many pointless questions. Rosa was dead, she knew that, she had transported the corpse back to her hometown, together with His Grace the Baron, in a long and sorrowful voyage. She had attended Rosa’s burial without weeping any pointless tears for an event that was such a natural part of the cycle of life. She knew, to an absolute certainty, that her aunt’s spirit, the aunt who she felt was closer to her than her own mother, would never abandon her. But she also believed that she would never again hear her voice or sense her presence.

  Instead, a few days after her return home, there Rosa was. As if she’d just returned from a brief, necessary trip. Nelide had found her close by her one time when she had discovered a crack in a terra-cotta cook pot, and was wondering whether there was a way to repair it rather than having to buy a new one. Out of the corner of her eye, she had perceived a movement, as if someone had just crossed the room; but no one was there. Then she had heard a whisper behind her left shoulder.

  Put the pot on a high flame, with a little water and some sugar. Then spread the mixture over the broken part: it will carbonize
and seal the crack.

  Grazie, Zi’ Ro’, she had said, thanking her aunt, and then proceeded to repair it. From that moment on, every so often, she’d felt her nearby; and maybe she had become chattier now that she was dead than she ever had been when she was alive.

  She started cutting the tomatoes, thinking about what cheese she would serve the baron to go with the ciauledda; the cheese was fundamental.

  An aged pecorino, the one that’s in the pantry, on the middle shelf, Rosa said. Nelide nodded, seriously.

  She’d be able to do it, she thought.

  She’d be all right.

  XXII

  Ricciardi had lingered in the office to flesh out De Blasio’s crime reports with the new information. For a while, Maione had stayed with him, but he had finally given in to his superior officer’s repeated invitations to go home for the night. It was the commissario’s impression that the brigadier didn’t give a lot of credence to the theory that the murderer was someone other than the count of Roccaspina. He especially sensed skepticism because, after all, the only evidence weighing on the other plate of the scales was the strong conviction of the count’s wife.

  Ricciardi, however, who was generally cold and rational, couldn’t rid himself of the impression that the woman might be right. Arranging in the lamplight on his desk the various scraps of information he had assembled, he realized he didn’t have much more material than what his colleague had examined in the immediate aftermath of the murder. Certainly, there was no murder weapon, and it struck him as strange that all this could have happened without anyone hearing a thing. But in theory it was possible, just as Maione might be right when he said, with a dash of cynicism, that whoever had heard anything was taking care to keep that to themselves to avoid inconvenient entanglements.