Maione, partially reclining on the large cushion, was fanning himself with his cap.
“What, do I have to explain my schedule to you? Not on your life: in this city not a leaf turns without everybody knowing the details. How can you do a job like mine if you’re working in the middle of a bazaar? In any case, yes, I’m here to ask you if you can give me any information about this duchess. In the quarter where she lived, nobody seems to know a thing, though of course everybody actually knows everything.”
Bambinella was toying with the pasta left over in the bowl, while Maione looked on hungrily.
“Eh, Brigadie’, the duchess . . . That duchess has a story that for lots of us was like a fairy tale, the fairy tales they tell little children. Only, as you’ve seen, it’s not a fairy tale with a happy ending.”
“What do you mean? A fairy tale, how?”
“The duchess wasn’t born into money. She was a soldier’s daughter, and her father was killed in the war. But she was beautiful, very beautiful indeed. I knew a guy who lost his head over her, a silk merchant, if I remember right. But she had other things in mind, she wanted to be independent, she didn’t want to have to say thank you to anyone. And so she decided to become a nurse.”
Maione was doing his best to control Bambinella’s tendency to wander off topic.
“Yes, but when did she get married to the duke?”
“That’s what I’m telling you about, if you’ll only have the patience to listen . . . So, the first duchess was quite the matron, a respectable member of the best society. Very religious, she spent all her time in church, helping the poor, in other words, the classic high society matron. Then she got sick, a nasty disease, you know that, no? The kind that starts with a bout of dizziness, a fainting spell . . . Are you all right, Brigadie’? I don’t know if I like your looks today . . .”
Maione feigned a kick from the pouf where he was sitting.
“Hey, don’t be a clown, I told you! I’m not sick, I’m healthy as a horse! Go on.”
“Eh, and such a lovely personality you have! So, to care for the duchess they hired Nurse Adriana, as lovely as sunshine and bursting with health. The sickness went on and on, and finally, to make that long story short, the duchess passed away. And the nurse hopped into the bed, in place of the sick woman.”
“When did this happen?”
Bambinella raised enameled nails to the tip of his nose.
“Let’s see, now . . . ten years ago or so.”
“And how did the marriage turn out?”
Bambinella shrugged.
“And how do marriages usually turn out, Brigadie’? Fine at first, then worse and worse, and then, at the end, a disaster. Though I have to admit that when people marry for money, things usually go a little better, because at least both parties tend to mind their own business. Still, the poor duchess, God rest her soul, didn’t really know how to calculate her own best interests. And when the duke, who’s a very old man, fell sick himself, she didn’t shut herself up in the palazzo pretending to grieve.”
Maione listened attentively.
“What do you mean, she didn’t shut herself up in the palazzo?”
Bambinella snickered again.
“Brigadie’, there are times when you make me feel sorry for you. You live in a city like this one, you do the job you do, and still you don’t know the basic things that everyone else knows. That’s why I was put here, so that I can explain things to you. Between you and your handsome mute commissario who never laughs, you’re both a little cut off from the real world.”
Maione snorted in annoyance.
“What are you talking about, cut off from the real world? Someone has to keep their eyes on the serious matters, and not spend their lives gossiping about who’s climbing into whose bed. Now, go on, tell me.”
“It’s very simple: Adriana meets a young man just like her, cheerful, intelligent, and ambitious. They fall in love. It’s against his best interests, because it damages his career, and it’s against her best interests, because she’s no longer invited to the better salons and drawing rooms. Still, they fall in love and for love, they tell everyone to go to hell. This is the part of the story I like best.”
The brigadier finally felt he was getting to the heart of the matter.
“And just who is he, this Prince Charming?”
“Prince Charming would be Mario Capece, Brigadie’. The journalist who runs the Roma. The one who, apparently, in the end, killed the duchess.”
I’ll never see you again.
That’s the only thought in my mind, I can’t think of anything else.
Do you remember, the very first time? We were introduced, at the theater. They were talking but I never heard a word. I was lost in your eyes, in that smile of yours. I could feel the passion swelling inside me, the passion that’s never subsided.
I’ll never see you again. It seems impossible.
Your face in my hands. The scent of your skin. You taught me that it’s possible to get drunk without a drop of wine, as the song lyrics go. It all seemed wasted, the time I spent without you. Even my children were so much wasted time. Work was wasted time. Any price I might have to pay was a trifle, for an hour with you.
I’ll never see you again.
Your laughter, a thousand silvery corals on marble, the sound of life itself. I can’t believe it, I’ll never hear you laugh again. You drove me crazy, you made me sick with love. The purest happiness in the most completely impure embrace.
And the fury, the red fury of seeing you smile at another man, watching as you sneak a glance at him. I can’t believe that the last time my hand touched you, it was to hurt you. I can’t believe it.
And I can’t believe that I’ll never see you again.
A moment’s silence followed Bambinella’s statement; from the window, along with the baking heat of early afternoon came the sound of crickets and occasional birdsong. Maione knew his informant’s tendency to exaggerate and over-dramatize, but he was still impressed.
“What do you mean, ‘apparently killed her’? How do you know that Capece murdered the duchess?”
Bambinella shook her head, opening her heavily mascaraed eyes wide.
“No, Brigadie’, don’t try to put words in my mouth that I never said. I don’t know who murdered the duchess. In fact, I have to tell you that I hope it wasn’t Capece. I’m very fond, you know, of love stories, but I don’t like murder stories one bit, on the other hand.”
“So what? We’re not in a theater, where you have to like how the story ends. Did Capece murder his lover or not?”
“How would I know, Brigadie’? All I can tell you is that everyone’s convinced that it really was him. The fact is that Donna Adriana was one of those women who loved to drive men out of their minds, and she knew how to do it. If you ask me, she really was in love with Capece, but even so she was always a bit of a slut. And Saturday night at the Salone Margherita the thing happened, and it happened bad.”
Maione was having a hell of a time keeping the conversation on subjects that he wanted to know about.
“What thing happened Saturday night? Bambine’, I beg of you: it’s hot out, my head is spinning, and I’m dying of hunger here, I can’t eat and I can’t tell you why. Don’t you get started too, now. Tell me what you want to tell me, and don’t waste my time.”
“Oooh, Brigadie’, are you on a diet? But why, you’re so charming the way you are, a man with girth and presence?”
The brigadier’s ferocious glare was more than sufficient to rein Bambinella in.
“All right, all right. I’ll tell you what happened. But let me make it clear that the reason I know these things is that a girlfriend of mine is a housekeeper at the Salone Margherita, actually to tell the truth, I hear that they’re going to promote her to the wardrobe deparment . . . eh, Brigadie’, don’t lose your temper, what a bear you are! Well, at any rate, at intermission everyone was standing around drinking, smoking, and gossiping because that’s one
of the reasons people even go to the theater. Just like that, Capece starts yelling at the duchess, saying that she had no right, that it was always the same thing with her, that he wouldn’t put up with it a second longer.”
“Why, what had the duchess done?”
Bambinella spread his arms wide.
“Who can say? No doubt, she’d said hello to someone, or she’d smiled at someone else. She often did. In any case, he was shouting and she was laughing. Just like that, my girlfriend told me that she threw her head back and was laughing loudly, ha ha ha, ha ha ha, as if he was a comedy skit. And that’s when he did the thing with the ring.”
“What do you mean, the thing with the ring?”
“He grabbed her hand and, shouting into her face that she didn’t deserve to have it, and that he never wanted to see her again, he yanked a ring off her finger.”
Maione wanted to know more.
“What ring? What ring are you talking about?”
Once again, Bambinella shrugged.
“What would I know about it? So she told him: ‘Go ahead and take it, the miserable ring. Why don’t you give it back to that ghost of a wife of yours.’”
“Why, is Capece a widower?”
“No, he’s no widower. It’s just that I’ve heard that Capece’s stopped thinking about his wife entirely and has been ignoring her for years; I hear that she’s all hearth and home and church, the complete opposite of the duchess.”
“And then?”
“And then, in front of everyone, he gave her an open-handed slap that knocked her head right around. A couple of men stepped forward, it’s a disgrace to see a man hit a woman in public. But she gestured to them to stop, dried the blood dripping out of her mouth, straightened her hair, and turned and went back into the theater.”
“And what did Capece do?”
“He left; but first he shouted something.”
Maione leaned in toward Bambinella, aware of his own hesitation.
“What did Capece shout?”
“He shouted: I’ll kill you with my own hands.”
XII
This is the worst time of the day. The time when the sun shows no more respect for those who can’t seek shelter, when the sun is at its most merciless. It is I who must help you all, and I move into the shade those of you that I can, the geraniums, the begonias. The hedges, the jasmines, bougainvilleas, and ivies; all I can do is watch you as you consume your reserves, the water that I gave you this morning. You have to stay there. In your place. Everyone in their place.
And what’s my place? Here, with you. In this empty palazzo, empty room after empty room, silence upon silence. A palazzo filled with ghosts. He too is a ghost. My father. I don’t remember him like this, gasping and wheezing in a bed, fighting a losing battle. I remember him big and strong, laughing happily with Mamma. Mamma. Mamma. What an enchanted word, a word that I utter not with my mouth, but with my heart a thousand times a day.
Mamma, you know. You know that the most important thing is love. It’s love that gives you the place you occupy. You always used to say that to me, that love was your true home, your true country. But you never explained what to do, if that love is somehow wrong.
Now she’s dead. Dead, Mamma. Just like you. Just like my father, even if he’s still there, gasping. And maybe just like me, and my mistaken love.
I open the drawer in the secretary desk, the concealed spring-operated drawer. I take out the ring. Your ring, Mamma. I clean it again, to make sure that there’s no trace of her filthy blood. That it’s just the way it used to be.
When it was on your finger. Mamma.
Ricciardi was thinking how paradoxical it was that the places where the Deed gave him the fewest visions should be hospitals and cemeteries. But then again, it made perfect sense: it was passions and strong emotions that generated violent deaths, not pain; and what inhabited those places was primarily pain.
He’d decided to wait for the results of the autopsy at the entrance to the mortuary, at the rear of the building. The hospital was ashamed of death, and so it did its best to hide it. Death represented a failure, a defeat.
Groups of people in tears, faces ashen with weariness and suffering. Women dressed in black held up by grim-faced boys, turned into grown men in the space of a few hours when confronted with loss. Parents, sons and daughters, wives, husbands. Regrets, words left unspoken. Memories.
Ricciardi stood to one side, unable to avoid being a witness to more pain and grief. He couldn’t have said which was worse, the dull repetition of the departed’s last emotion or the abyss into which the survivors were plunged.
The mortuary door swung open and Doctor Modo emerged, drying his hands on the hem of his stained labcoat.
“Well, look who’s come to bring his sunny smile into this place of suffering. Ciao, Ricciardi: welcome to our little theater. Were you so eager to see me again that you couldn’t resist or do you think that the atmosphere of the morgue suits you better than the one at police headquarters?”
“Sooner or later someone’s going to notice that the atmosphere of police headquarters suits you better than the hospital does. And I’ll have to come get you, and I’ll throw away the key after I do. How did it go, are you done with the duchess?”
Modo smiled broadly.
“Oh, we had a long talk, your client and I. And she gave me lots and lots of information, but it’s all very, very confidential. I’m only authorized to release it if provided with a lavish dinner, your treat.”
Ricciardi shook his head.
“At last. Concealing evidence. I knew that would be the charge that would finally allow me to put you away where the sun doesn’t shine. And considering this heat, I’m even doing you a favor. Fine, fine, but we’ll have to meet at the trattoria near police headquarters; I’m waiting for Maione, who has some information of his own. Which he’s giving me free of charge.”
Maione hadn’t managed to pry any other interesting information out of Bambinella; in particular, he’d tried to find out something else about the other residents of the palazzo and their habits, but as far as he could tell there was nothing more that his informant could add to what he’d already told him.
He’d only detected an instant of hesitation when it came to the duke’s son, Ettore; Bambinella knew that the man stayed out very late practically every night, and that sometimes he slept somewhere else, though she had no idea where he might go. Maione had decided that, since the man was a scholar, the circles he frequented were unlikely to have anything in common with Bambinella.
In the terrible afternoon heat, hungrier than ever, Maione decided to go see Ricciardi and apprise him of the results of his investigations. He found the commissario in his office, waiting for him.
They traded accounts of their day: the commissario shared with the brigadier his impressions of the conversation with Garzo; Maione informed Ricciardi of the information he’d gathered in the neighborhood around Palazzo Camparino and from Bambinella. Ricciardi sat there, thoughtfully, fingers knit in front of his mouth.
“So everyone thinks it was Capece who did it. Sometimes, the most obvious solution also happens to be the right one: after all, life isn’t a novel. We’ll have to question him.”
“Yes, Commissa’, but we’ll have to move cautiously. You heard what that ignorant boor Garzo said, no? We’ll wind up putting him on the alert and then he’ll reach out to someone in high places and the next thing you know they’ll put a gag order on us.”
“You’re quite right. We’ll move carefully, at least as carefully as we normally would. Tomorrow we’ll go to the palazzo and talk to the two surviving dukes, and we’ll see what they have to tell us. Among other things, from what you tell me, there seems to have been bad blood between husband and wife, stepmother and stepson.”
Maione scratched his head with the handkerchief.
“Did you get anything from Doctor Modo? I checked the shell against the models that we have in our archives, and it’s just as you
expected: a Beretta 7.65 from the war, not the old model but the pistol they issued to officers toward the end, in ’17; there are still thousands of them in circulation. Nothing unusual about it. I sent two policemen to canvas the room from top to bottom, nothing else emerged. The murderer only fired that one shot.”
Ricciardi nodded agreement.
“That extortionist Modo said that he’ll report on the autopsy only if I buy him dinner. Why don’t you come along, it’s the trattoria near here, at Santa Brigida; that way you can hear too.”
Maione turned paler still.
“No, Dotto’, I’m not hungry. If anything, you can tell me about it tomorrow.”
“No, I insist: four ears are better than two. And after all, when have you ever had a problem with eating twice? I don’t want to stay out late tonight either. Let’s hear what Modo has to say and then we’ll go home.”
Maione resigned himself.
“All right, at your orders. But I’m not going to eat anything. I’ll just watch you have dinner, then I’ll eat at home.”
Enrica sensed something strange. Her mother had returned from her walk and seemed excited: she’d brought a bouquet of flowers and had told the housekeeper to get out the fine silverware and polish it. She’d tried to find out the reason for such lavish care for the dining room table on an ordinary day of the week and in response had received nothing more than a nervous giggle and a shrug.
When Maria was like that, there was no point in insisting, as Enrica knew all too well; but she could sense a strange uneasiness. At a certain point she saw the woman who normally came to do her mother’s hair enter the apartment; at that point she asked whether there was some special occasion that she knew nothing about, and she was told that the woman was there for her.
Her eyes opened wide, and before she could say anything in response, she was told:
“And put on your best dress. We’re having guests for dinner tonight.”
Along the short stretch of road from police headquarters to Via Santa Brigida, where they had an appointment to meet Doctor Modo, Maione and Ricciardi encountered only a few living souls and one dead one. The living ones were boisterous young boys on their way back from the beach, their clothing wrapped in dripping bundles, barefoot and wet-haired, who were filling the air with loud laughter and rude bantering. The dead man, whom only Ricciardi could see, of course, was dissolving slowly in the massive heat with his heavy jacket, dating back to the end of winter.
Everyone in Their Place Page 8