Concetta didn’t seem surprised. She shrugged.
“And who would have seen them? The duke and the young master have never set foot in here. I don’t look at that sort of thing and Mariuccia doesn’t know how to read. She could have tacked them up on the walls and it wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
Ricciardi sensed the disapproval more in the words than in the tone of voice. It struck him as sarcasm, not resentment. Of course, you could never be certain.
“Aside from the duke and his son, and the duchess of course, who else came into this room?”
Concetta shot an eloquent glance at the letters still in Maione’s hand, and then she said:
“How would I know, Commissa’? I go to bed early at night, I already told you. And the Signora had the padlock keys.”
We get it, thought Ricciardi. “Yours, Mario” had access to the bedroom, as well as the heart, of the lovely duchess.
“All right. Don’t touch anything in here, leave it exactly as it is, until you hear otherwise from us. Now announce us to the duke.”
After a sleepless night, dominated by the thought of Ricciardi who had waited in vain for her to appear at the window, Enrica arose the next morning grim and determined. If her sweet disposition and her upbringing had both conspired to keep her from being openly rude to her guests the night before, now she had made up her mind to have it out with her parents. She would not only tell them that Sebastiano did not interest her in the slightest, but she would also forbid them, from that day forward, to plot behind her back again, even if they thought they were doing it for her own good. Guessing at her intentions, however, her mother had left the apartment at dawn, telling the housemaid that she was going to pay a call on a cloistered aunt, a nun; her father, moreover, had left for the shop at least an hour earlier than his usual time of departure.
All right then, thought Enrica. Then I’ll come see you, my dear Papà; I’m really interested to see what you have to say for yourself.
Nonetheless, she tended to her household duties, and it was only after she’d washed up, done the grocery shopping, and given instructions for lunch that she changed her clothes, put on her hat, and set out for the shop on the Via Toledo.
XV
The bedroom where Matteo Musso, duke of Camparino, was losing his final battle was immersed in shadow. You could smell the aromas of disinfectant and putrefaction, lye and stale urine, medicine and dust. Ricciardi recognized the stench of death.
Once their eyes became accustomed to the dark, the two policemen distinguished a silhouette in the bed, the source of the rhythmic gasping they’d heard when they entered. It would seem that the duke was asleep. Suddenly, however, a raucous voice said: “Conce’, open the shutters just a little. Let me see who’s come to call on me.”
The woman moved soundlessly in the darkness, demonstrating that she had a perfect knowledge of the arrangement of furniture and objects, and opened the window just a crack. A shaft of light entered the room, illuminating Ricciardi and Maione like a spotlight in the night.
“Your grace. My name is Ricciardi and I’m a Commissario of Public Safety. This is Brigadier Maione, with me. First of all, my condolences for your loss.”
The vague shadow had taken on some outlines. On the pillow lay a skull, hollowed out cheeks and eyes, a shiny bald cranium; an exceedingly skinny neck sank under the sheets, from which protruded a parchment-like arm. The hand looked like the talons of some bird of prey, the yellowish fingers wiggled slowly.
“Forget about that. A stranger has died here, what should I care about it? Be seated. Conce’, make the Commissario and the Brigadier comfortable.”
His voice sounded like the rasping of a metal file on sandpaper. It sent shivers down your back. The heat in the bedroom was tremendous.
“Please, don’t go to any trouble, Signora, grazie. We’ll only be here a short while, just a few questions, if you have no objection, your grace.”
Once again the hand waved softly, as if giving permission. Maione decided that over time, the duke had gotten used to expressing himself in this fashion, with gestures, to save his breath. Ricciardi went on:
“When was the last time you saw the duchess?”
There were a few moments of silence. Just when the commissario was starting to think that the duke must have fallen asleep, the scratchy voice said:
“Have you ever spoken to a dead person before, Commissario?”
This time it was Ricciardi’s turn to be left breathless. Just like that, point blank, that question. As if the duke had possessed, from his deathbed of pain, the faculty of peering through the darkness and into his soul.
“What do you mean by that?”
The tone of voice was harsher than he meant it to be, but the duke hardly seemed to notice.
“You can see with your own eyes exactly what I mean. I’m a dead man, Commissa’. Not today, not tomorrow, or whenever they carry me out of here. I died when my wife passed away. Not this one, of course. My wife, my real wife.”
With some effort, Ricciardi had resumed breathing normally. A metaphor. It had been nothing but a metaphor.
“Why do you say that, your grace? And if I may venture to ask, what does it have to do with my question?”
“It has a great deal to do with it, Commissario. A man dies at the very moment that his life no longer means anything to anyone else. And the last person I had any meaning for was Carmen. I died when she died.”
Ricciardi didn’t know what to say, so he just waited.
“Right now, you’re talking to a dead man. It’s a novel experience, isn’t it?”
You have no idea, thought Ricciardi. The duke went on:
“A dead man doesn’t deserve affection or care. He’s just there to be exploited for his possessions, for his money. Every so often, maybe, you might bring him a flower. The woman you’re talking about, Commissario, the last time she came into this room was at Easter. She came in laughing, she threw open the windows and let in a gust of cold air. She looked at me and she started laughing again; if you ask me, she was drunk. She said, it’s Easter Sunday, Christ is risen, why don’t you get up, too? She put a bunch of flowers into a vase, on that dresser, and then she left. Who knows who even gave her those flowers. I couldn’t tell you when the time before that was.”
The effort that it took the man to go on talking must have been enormous. His sentences were fragmentary, and he had to catch his breath every third or fourth word. Maione felt an urge to leave: the heat, the stench, and the discomfort he felt as he listened to the duke were becoming intolerable. But Ricciardi seemed willing to go on asking questions.
“How long ago were you married?”
The implicit meaning of the question was clear to Maione, and also to the duke: there was such a vast age difference, how could he have thought it would turn out any other way? The old man cackled, until a violent burst of coughing interrupted his laughter. Concetta hastened over to the bed with a handkerchief and dabbed at his mouth.
“She was young and I was already old. You see, Commissario, what cruel tricks old age plays on us. A glance, a word, a smile: and suddenly you feel interesting again. I knew it, I always knew that what Adriana wanted was the title, and the money. And I took her in all the same. Because she was beautiful and young. I gave her what she wanted, and I took what she had. As long as I could, as long as I was capable of it. It was an exchange, nothing more than an exchange.”
In a way, the chilly nature of the reasoning horrified Ricciardi more than the broken, gasping voice.
“There’s no such thing as love, Commissario. Love is an illusion. There’s only self-interest, everyone wants something that someone else has. If you think that love is wanting someone else’s well-being, you’re lying to yourself.”
Ricciardi half-closed his eyes, and he saw a young woman sitting on a sofa, listening to a man’s promises. He should have let her go, if what he really felt was love, but instead he felt like he was dying. The stabbing pain behind
his stomach returned for a brief instant.
“What about hatred, Duke? What does hatred make you do? When the illusion of love vanishes, what’s left?”
Maione scuffed the floor with his foot. Concetta stood like a statue in the shadows.
“Hatred is a thought, Commissario. An impulse, perhaps even a desire. Someone who’s busy dying hour after hour, someone who never leaves his bed and depends on the kindness of those who come to assist him, cannot afford the luxury of hatred. Because it’s a luxury too.”
Ricciardi considered what the duke had just said. He couldn’t imagine that shell of a man murdering the duchess; but still the duke was clear-minded, he could have issued orders and given instructions. Out of the corner of his eye he studied Concetta, who didn’t even seem to be breathing.
“You have a son, isn’t that right?”
The question fell into silence. It seemed to Ricciardi that even the rattling of the duke’s dying lungs had changed its tone. After a few moments the man replied.
“Yes, I have a son. His name is Ettore.”
No affection, no emotion. A simple stark statement. Ricciardi waited, but the duke didn’t seem to have any intention of adding anything; when he did speak it was to say:
“I hope you’ll forgive me, now, Commissario; I’m very tired. I’ll be glad to see you again whenever you like, but right now Madame Death wants my sleep.”
“Of course, your grace; pardon me. Just one more thing: did your wife wear a . . . special ring, as far as you know? Something of particular value, I don’t know, a rare stone perhaps?”
The duke coughed again, and it took him a while to gather his breath and his strength for a response.
“My wife, my real wife, my Carmen had a ring. It was my family’s ring, with our coat of arms; the ring that all the duchesses of Camparino wore. I took it off her dead hand, but I wish I’d never done it, I’ve regretted it every instant of my life since then; and I gave it to her, to Adriana. As if she were worthy of wearing it. When you’re finished with the . . . with her, give it back to us. To my son. It’s the only part of her I wish I had back.”
Ricciardi decided that this was hardly the moment to inform the duke that the ring had already been taken from the interloping gold digger; and for now the brief description of the object was all he needed. He said goodbye and left the room, and a relieved Maione followed him out.
Livia walked out of the elevator in the hotel lobby; instantly, she was surrounded by a porter, a coachman, and a bellboy who, until a few seconds earlier, had been snoozing in the late-morning heat. Two men reading the paper as they sipped their coffee looked up and both whistled softly and admiringly.
The woman was stunningly beautiful: she’d spent more than two hours trying on, over and over, just some of the countless dresses that she’d brought with her; in the end she’d selected a little light gray dress in a fine material, with a black handbag and black shoes. The hat, set at a coquettish angle on her short, dark brown hair, had a tiny black veil, her one concession to her state of mourning. If it had been entirely up to her, she’d have dispensed with that as well, but she didn’t know what Ricciardi thought about it and so she’d decided to keep at least a marker of her loss, which was more social than it was emotional. She wore black gloves on her hands, in fishnet, just like her stockings.
Elegance was one of Livia’s distinguishing characteristics, like her feline movements and the spicy aroma of her perfume. As always, her entrance into any room immediately captured the attention of one and all, and never let it go.
The two men had risen and, with allusive smiles, come over; they clearly belonged to the elite, discreet army of gigolos that brightened the holidays of solitary female tourists, especially foreign ones. Livia smiled and gestured with one hand to the only member of the group whose services interested her: the coachman.
The man, hat in hands, bowed and inquired: “Where can I take you, Signo’?”
With a smile, Livia told him. Her offensive had finally begun.
XVI
After they left the bedroom, Ricciardi asked Concetta to go and see whether the duke’s son was available to see them; they waited in the anteroom, in the company of the ghostly image of the duchess, which kept repeating its denunciation of the disappearance of the ring.
Ricciardi thought in silence, his hands in his pockets, looking out the window down into the palazzo courtyard. The building’s height kept much of the courtyard in shadow, including the luxuriant bed of multicolored hydrangeas. The commissario wondered whether the murderer had hidden in one of the many nooks and crannies, or if he had entered with the duchess, upon her return home.
Part of his thoughts, though, went to the words the duke had spoken, words that made him ponder himself and his life. A man dies at the very moment that his life no longer means anything to anyone else; those words had gouged a hole into his chest. He thought of Rosa, of the excessively maternal care she lavished on him; he thought of Maione, of the rough and only partial confidences they exchanged, now and again; he thought of Doctor Modo, and the cutting irony and refined mockery that characterized their relationship, as well as the occasional beers they drank together; he thought of his mother, her silent love, her weary smile.
Am I alive? he wondered. And if not, when did I die? Looking out the window, he saw Sciarra below him, busily raking dead leaves out of the flower bed. Not far away from him, the two children were quarreling, the older girl hiding something under her dress; probably something to eat. The little man whose sleeves were too long would turn around every so often and pretend to chase them, then he’d return to his work with a broad smile on his face. Well, no doubt about it, Sciarra was still alive. The woman standing behind him, however, whose immense grief at departing from her earthly existence he could feel against the back of his head, was not.
He thought irrationally of Enrica, of just who the man whispering into her ear with a smile might have been. Whoever he was, he wasn’t like him: he wasn’t condemned to solitude. He felt a stabbing pain in his stomach: this sensation too was starting to become familiar to him.
Soundlessly, Concetta came to summon them. The young master could receive them now.
Just once, for a change, you devote yourself to yourself for a bit. You’ve washed your hair in the large washbasin of the porcelain bath accessories. You rinse your hair with the pitcher, using water that you heated in the big cook pot in the kitchen: it’s something you haven’t done in ages. Now you’re brushing it out, sitting in front of the mirror; again, something you’ve almost forgotten how to do. Lazily, you also wonder whether it’s worth the trouble of curling it with a permanent, instead of pulling it up into a bun on the back of your head, the way you always do: your hair’s not ugly after all, once it’s washed and loosened. It’s not dull anymore. There’s a new glistening light to it.
There’s a different expression in your eyes, as well; you wonder what it could be. What could be new about them. Perhaps it’s just the hint of a smile.
Perhaps you want to be ready when the time comes.
The staircase was cool due to the thickness of the palazzo’s outer walls. As they climbed, Maione, who was still panting and sweating, directed a question to Concetta’s vast back:
“But with all the empty rooms in the building, why on earth did the young master choose to go live on the top floor?”
Concetta replied without raising her voice, as if she were in a church.
“The young master moved upstairs after his mother’s death, ten years ago. He loves plants, he keeps them on the terrace; so he wants to be close to them. Also, it’s comfortable for him, he has two large rooms.”
Ricciardi broke in to ask:
“Is there no direct access, from his apartment to the second story? Is it absolutely necessary to take the stairs?”
“Yes, you absolutely have to take the stairs.”
They’d reached a landing, with a small wooden door. Maione asked:
�
��And who lives there?”
Before Concetta had time to answer, the wooden door swung open and a boy looked out. His resemblance to Mariuccia, the housemaid, was unmistakable. In one hand he held a book, in the other, a chunk of bread and tomato.
Glaring venomously at the snack, Maione answered his own question.
“Why did I even ask? The Sciarra family. You must be the eldest, no?”
The boy, intimidated by the uniform, nodded his head yes. He resembled his mother so distinctly that Maione practically expected him to start sobbing at any moment.
“Yessir, Vincenzo Sciarra, at your service. I’m going to the after-school tutoring session.”
“Well, then get going. But don’t your jaws get tired, chewing all the time like that? Go on, don’t just stand there.”
The boy took off, while Ricciardi looked at the brigadier and shook his head.
“This fasting you’re doing isn’t good for you: you’re becoming intractable.”
Gosh, thought Maione. By those standards, the commissario’s been on a fast since the day he was born.
They’d now come to a large ornamentally carved door, a few steps higher up.
Concetta, who had gone in to announce their arrival in the meanwhile, came back out.
“If you please, go right on in. It’s the door at the far end of the first room. I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
They walked through a large messy room, a cross between a drawing room and a library. There was an imposing desk piled high with books, both open and closed, with sheets of paper scattered across it, covered with a close, slanted script; one wall was covered, floor to ceiling, with a bookcase made of dark wood, overflowing with books; there were two armchairs, and between them a small table on which sat a trumpet gramophone, while on the floor lay several 78 RPM disks. On another low table sat a bottle of liquor, with a few dirty glasses.
Everyone in Their Place Page 11