Modo had removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and now he was kneeling down by the corpse.
“Well . . . judging from appearances, I’d opt for a myocardial infarction. Or perhaps she simply died of boredom. What do you say?”
“I’d say that, to the best of my knowledge, they’re looking for a new vaudeville routine at the Salone Margherita. Have you ever considered it? A new line of work might spare you the indignities of internal exile.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll go talk to the stage manager and see if they’re looking for a duo. I always work best with a partner, and you have such an infectious laugh. Now let me do my job, please, and I’ll have something for you in a couple of minutes. I’ve already alerted the morgue, and they’re sending an ambulance; in this heat it’s not advisable to leave a corpse out in the air for too long.”
In the meanwhile, the photographer, sweating copiously, was punctuating the scene with flashes from all angles: the dead woman, the cushion, the door. Maione, who had stepped away to inspect the stairs, came back in.
“Buon giorno, Dotto’, what a pleasure,” he said, touching fingertips to visor.
“And here we have him, another comedian. A very good morning to you too, Brigadie’. Next time, though, perhaps we should meet at a trattoria somewhere, if you really want it to be a pleasure.”
Maione sighed.
“Eh, if only we could. Now then, the courtyard offers plenty of hiding places, Commissa’. The four columns, various nooks and crannies, the doorman’s booth. There’s nothing wrong with the padlock, the chain wasn’t tampered with: whoever opened the gate did it with the key. The stairs lead up to two other floors, which must have been installed at some later date: if you ask me, when they built this palazzo, it must have had ceilings higher than the Naples cathedral. Right above us are two doors, one of them is closed, and that must be where this famous young master lives; the other door is open, and inside are the Sciarras’ children who, I hardly need tell you, are eating. And then there’s a narrow little staircase that leads up to the terrace.”
Ricciardi listened intently.
“And have you talked to any of the spectators, downstairs in the street? No one heard a thing, no, of course not? But we do know that someone fired at least one pistol shot.”
Maione ran an already drenched handkerchief over his face.
“No, Commissa’, when has anyone ever heard anything? Still, this time there’s a justification, the festa was last night and they danced and sang out front until three in the morning. The main event is a tarantella that lasts for an hour, with the dancers spinning around a bonfire of old wood, you can still see the debris outside, they’re cleaning up now. Can you imagine, a bonfire with this heat? People are crazy.”
The photographer coughed discreetly.
“Commissario, I’m done here. I’ll get you the prints tomorrow night or, at the very latest, the day after tomorrow. Arrivederci.”
Ricciardi gave a little farewell wave and lifted the cushion. It was a foot square, fringed with gold frogging and with little tassels at the corners. Made of silk, with a floral motif, stuffed with goose down. Just as the commissario had guessed, the side that had been turned toward the floor had a vast burn mark more or less in the center, while on the other side there was a large depression matching the duchess’s face, with the exit hole made by the bullet.
As he leaned forward to see more clearly, Ricciardi saw signs of moisture: saliva, perhaps a little blood as well. The pillow had been pushed down violently.
As he laid it back down onto the floor he noticed that, partially concealed by the cushion, there was also a mark on the floor. Getting down on both knees, the commissario looked closer; it seemed to be a murky stain left by a shoe, not exactly a footprint. As absurd as it might be, since it hadn’t rained in forever, it might have been a mudstain left by a wet shoe: he could just glimpse minuscule fragments of gritty dirt. At the far corner of the room, at regular intervals, the dead image was repeating:
“The ring, the ring, you’ve taken the ring, the ring is missing.”
Ricciardi spoke to Doctor Modo.
“Bruno, forgive me; could you tell me something right away about her left hand, too?”
The doctor stood up, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. His shirt, crushed to his chest by his suspenders, was drenched with sweat.
“I’m not cut out for this damned profession anymore, I’m too old. I need to do a nice calm autopsy, otherwise, I swear, I won’t tell you a thing. I’m sick and tired of quick results after a hasty examination, I’m running the risk of telling you a bunch of nonsense that’ll blow up in my face later, and I’ll lose my reputation for infallibility.”
Ricciardi shook his head.
“Well, that’s something you don’t have to worry about, you may not know it but everyone around here does: all you ever say is a bunch of nonsense. So a little bit more, a little bit less: go ahead and tell me some right now.”
Modo smiled.
“That’s what I adore about you: the way you buck up your colleagues. Well, now, here’s what I’d say: pistol shot, fracture of both cranial bones, frontal and occipital, with full penetration of the brain. The bullet is right here, lodged in the backrest of the sofa. No burn marks, this shot wasn’t fired pointblank, but I saw you examining the cushion, so you already figured that out. From the bleeding I can tell you that she was alive when she was shot. More than that I wouldn’t venture to say without an autopsy, even under torture.”
“Now just tell me about her left hand.”
“The middle finger is dislocated, but there’s no hematoma: it was done when she was already dead. And there’s a small bruise on her ring finger, so that was when she was still alive. Maybe she died between one finger and the other. Ah, here’s the ambulance from the morgue.”
Ricciardi, hands in pockets, watched as the duchess left her palazzo for the last time. At least, her physical form. Behind him, her image was saying to him:
“The ring, the ring, you’ve taken the ring, the ring is missing.”
VIII
Ricciardi insisted on leaving with Doctor Modo. That surprised Maione, who asked:
“Commissa’, what’s this, aren’t you going to question the duke and the young master right away? If they were the only ones in the house, and they’re still here, wouldn’t it be best to hear what they have to say?”
His superior officer briefly shook his head, brushing the stray lock of hair from his forehead with his hand.
“No. First I need to know with some certainty what time the duchess was killed, and especially whether there are other findings from the autopsy. To question them now would only mean giving them advance warning. Anyway, you leave Camarda here, tell him to take note of who leaves the house. And to make sure that no one comes in, until ordered otherwise.”
As they were leaving the palazzo, Sciarra and Sivo walked toward them, and Maione told them to make sure they could be reached and not to leave town, neither the two of them nor Sciarra’s family, for any reason whatsoever. The doorman shrugged his shoulders in his enormous jacket and said:
“And where are we supposed to go? We’re not going anywhere, Brigadie’, you can be sure of that.”
Maione conveyed the commissario’s instructions to Camarda with a subtle hint of sadistic pleasure, because he found him munching on a large hunk of bread with fried zucchini. Leaving aside the stab of envy, his stomach noisily reminded him that lunchtime was long gone. Damn that fruit vendor and damn his belly.
They walked part of the way with the doctor; before he veered off toward the hospital, Modo was shaking his head.
“There’s something fishy about this whole thing. What, you stick a cushion on my face, you push down on it so hard that my mouth leaves a mark, and you shoot me through it, and the whole time I obediently let you do it, without even lifting a finger? No, no: there’s something fishy about it.”
Maione agreed, as he huffed and puffed up t
he Via Diaz hill, sweat coming from his pores like water from a fountain.
“It seems strange to me too. And it also strikes me as odd that no one heard a thing; fine, there was a celebration going on, with all the noise, and the music, the shouting, whistling, and raspberries. But a gunshot is a gunshot, someone ought to have heard it at least indoors.”
Ricciardi looked straight ahead, lost in thought, and, as usual, bareheaded. The few pedestrians they encountered stared at him and stepped aside in bafflement.
“Not necessarily. The bullet was fired into the cushion, and the real question is who was home at the time. Bruno, you need to let us have the results of the autopsy as soon as possible. I have a hunch that we’re going to get some explanations from that.”
Modo snorted theatrically.
“Well, that’s a new one on me! Never once do you tell me: Doctor, take your time, there’s no hurry. Enjoy your Sunday, get some rest, then tomorrow just do your job, however long it takes.”
“All right, how about this: Doctor, at your leisure, let us have a nice clear report tomorrow morning, and no later.”
The doctor stopped in his tracks and stared at Maione.
“Brigadie’, seriously: let’s join forces and kill him now. I want the pleasure of doing the autopsy myself. I’d even work Christmas Eve on that.”
“No, Dotto’, then what fun would it be to work on a Sunday without the commissario?”
Modo shook his head.
“Okay, I understand: everyone’s conspiring against me. Anyway, I wasn’t planning to make more than one visit to the whorehouse in Piazza Trieste and Trento, tonight. Just means that for once it’ll be the whores who are crying.”
Ricciardi waved goodbye with a quick flick of his hand.
“Crying tears of joy. You’ve just given me an idea: they might have murdered the duchess, if that meant being spared a visit from you. Well, until tomorrow morning, then.”
Along the way, Maione informed Ricciardi of all that he’d found out by questioning the help about everyday life at the palazzo.
“The Sivo woman, Commissa’, won’t talk about the duke and duchess willingly. She’s loyal, too many years living in that house. But it seemed to me that the key to it all is the young master; he must have had a motive for going to live all on his own in the attic, don’t you think?”
“I agree: that’s something we need to determine. And we also need to find out whether the duke is actually bedridden or whether, if he really needed to, he could make his way out to the anteroom.”
“No, all three of them were very certain about that point, even Sciarra’s wife, between one sob and the next. It’s been years since the duke last walked, and in fact they’re all expecting him to die any minute. But I have a piece of news for you: do you want to guess the name of the chaplain who comes to say mass at Palazzo Camparino? An old friend of ours: Don Pierino Fava, do you remember him?”
Ricciardi certainly remembered Don Pierino, the diminutive assistant pastor of the church of San Ferdinando, an opera enthusiast who had helped them to solve the murder of the tenor, Vezzi. An involuntary association made him think of Livia, the victim’s beautiful widow, and he felt a surge of uneasiness and a twinge of pleasure.
“I remember him very well indeed; good, he’ll be able to give us some useful information. We’ll have to go call on him. And what do you have to say about the others?”
Maione mopped his face with his handkerchief for what seemed like the thousandth time.
“It’s just not normal, this heat wave. Sciarra’s only technically a doorman as far as I’m concerned, he strikes me as more of a Pulcinella with that enormous nose of his and that floppy outsized uniform. And then there’s the voice, did you hear it? Still, he’s not stupid and he can give us some information. The wife, on the other hand, what with housekeeping and children, and if you take into account the fact that she strikes me as pretty much of a dope, is not going to give us anything more than a confirmation where needed.”
They’d reached police headquarters; the big street door with its shade gave at least the illusion of an oasis of cool.
“Anyway, you keep collecting information where you can find it, but be careful not to alarm anyone. You could talk to some of the people in the neighborhood. One thing you can count on is that nobody minds their own business, and that’s certainly a family in the spotlight. What about that friend of yours, what’s the name? The one who knows everything about everybody.”
Maione’s face took on a wary expression.
“What friend are you talking about, Commissa’?”
“What do you mean, what friend; or should I have called him your ‘girlfriend’?”
A pained look appeared on the brigadier’s face.
“Commissa’, stop making fun. If you’re talking about Bambinella, he’s neither a friend nor a girlfriend, he’s a questionable character and I don’t have anything to do with him. It’s just that since, as you say, he knows everything about everyone, sometimes he can be useful, and that’s all.”
“And that’s all I meant to say, don’t you worry. He can tell us whether in certain circles anyone knows anything about that family, nothing more. See what you can find out. I’m going over to Caflisch to get something to eat, you want anything?”
Maione sighed and spread his arms.
“Not you too, Commissa’? No, thanks. I’m not hungry. This heat kills my appetite.”
By the time Ricciardi got back to police headquarters the sun was already setting. Outside the door to his office he found Ponte, the deputy chief of police’s doorman and clerk; a fidgety mannered little man, who couldn’t manage to conceal the superstitious discomfort that the commissario stirred in him. This fear tended to translate into the unpleasant habit of darting his gaze in all directions without ever looking the person he was talking to in the eye, which annoyed Ricciardi no end.
“Commissario, buona sera. You were called this morning, I heard; for a murder, no?”
Looking at the door, the floor, and the ceiling.
“Ponte, you know perfectly where I was and why, there’s no point in you pretending you’re in the dark. I left word this morning and no one would have had any difficulty getting in contact with me all day long.”
The clerk stared at the railing along the stairs.
“Of course, Commissa’, you’re quite right. I received a phone call from Dottor Garzo, who told me to let you know that he wants to talk to you first thing tomorrow.”
Ricciardi made a face.
“Ah, exactly. A duchess is killed, and naturally gears turn at the highest level. You can tell Dottor Garzo that tomorrow morning I’ll be at work, like always. And plenty of my colleagues will be at work, too, if he prefers to assign the investigation to one of them.”
Ponte looked down the hallway with such intensity that Ricciardi wondered if he too could see the images of the dead cop and dead thief.
“No, what are you saying, Commissario, that would never even occur to the Dottore. He knows that there’s no one like you in the place. He just wants to hear from you.”
“And he’ll hear from me. Have a good evening.”
Ricciardi was climbing the steep street that led home; even after sunset the heat continued to lay siege to the city. Via Toledo on a Sunday night and in the summer took on a different appearance: the families emerged from their ground floor hovel apartments, the bassi, where the temperature spiked to intolerable peaks; in order to keep from dying of suffocation they took to the streets. The older residents sat on chairs they’d carried outside, the younger ones perched on wooden crates employed as benches, and they all chatted or played cards to kill time, until late at night. From open windows on the higher floors came dance music from the radio, along with the laughter of children and, here and there, a loud fight.
Ricciardi thought about how impossible it was in a setting like that to preserve one’s right to privacy. And how, in that churning maelstrom of love, passion, wealt
h, and poverty, envy and jealousy sprang up like weeds—and with them, murder.
As he walked, he realized that wherever he passed he brought with him silence and discomfort, like a chilly gust of wind; he was the Other, an unfamiliar, unsettling figure, viewed as inherently dangerous.
He didn’t really mind it, as he strolled uphill, bare-headed, hands in his pockets, the sound of footsteps echoing off the stone paving slabs; he wouldn’t have wanted to feel part of all those emotions, which mingled with the thoughts of the dead whom he could glimpse here and there, wherever they’d been stabbed to death or sliced in two by the wheels of trolley cars or horse-drawn carriages. All that regretful yearning for life, the pain of letting the world go and the grief over a sudden death, wasn’t really all that different from the passions of the living and their thousandfold busy little businesses.
Hunger, love; the desire to own things, the lust for power, falsehood, faithlessness. The murders to which Ricciardi was a daily witness were generally the product of all this. His mind drifted back to the duchess’s repeated phrase:
“The ring, the ring, you’ve taken the ring, the ring is missing.”
Who had she been speaking to? To her murderer, in all likelihood. But all too often he’d heard phrases that had been addressed to third parties, whether present or absent. Which ring? The one on her middle finger, torn off after her death? With her last breath, had she seen whoever it was that would later take it from her? Or was it the ring on her ring finger, with the bruise that served as evidence that the woman was still alive when it was taken from her?
Whether one or the other, the ring must have had some special meaning because no other valuables, and there were plenty available, had been taken. Something told Ricciardi that if he could find the ring, he’d find the murderer. Which meant it was a crime of passion, then. A crime of love.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ricciardi glimpsed a young woman leading a man by the hand through the door of a building. Love. His thoughts flew to Enrica. For more than a year she’d been nothing but a picture glimpsed through a window, nothing more or less than a painting by Vermeer, a piece of the normal life, so close at hand but so unattainable, that he’d always be denied. Seeing her embroider, wash dishes, the slow and precise gestures of her left-handed activities was a nightly spectacle that he’d never willingly give up, and he was glad to leave things as they were: she was safe from him and from the Deed, sheltered by the two panes of glass.
Everyone in Their Place Page 5