The commissario gestured vaguely with one hand.
“That’s what scares me the most, when it all fits together. He loved the duchess, no? On this point we agree. And he truly seemed on the brink of despair when we talked to him. And he came to the funeral: if you ask me, a murderer wouldn’t normally run that risk. It could have been him, I’m not saying it couldn’t. But it’s still not a certainty. Let’s go and see for ourselves.”
“Yessir. Shall we go immediately?”
“No. We’ll go later. I have something to do first, an errand of my own. You wait for me here, I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
Maione nodded. But he was concerned.
Livia hadn’t slept a wink. It wasn’t so much the fear, which surprised her because she’d had every reason to be afraid: what had really put a chill in her heart was the fear of losing him.
Strange, for a woman whose husband had been murdered, she mused; and yet she never remembered feeling that same stab of pain in her heart except once, years before, when the doctor, standing by the cradle in which her baby lay, had shaken his head hopelessly. Who was this man? she asked herself. What had he done to her, that he mattered so much even though there was nothing between them?
By the light of dawn, on the balcony of her hotel room, she realized that she was crying. For no good reason.
Ricciardi arrived at Palazzo Camparino just as the church bell was chiming nine. Sciarra came to meet him with a broom in hand, followed by his son, who was sniveling.
“Commissa’, buon giorno. At your orders.”
Ricciardi nodded toward the child who was yanking on his father’s sleeve, making it even longer than it already was.
“And why is this little one crying?”
Sciarra grimaced in a comic leer, beneath his gigantic nose.
“Well, why do you think? As usual, Commissa’: he’s hungry, and he wants me to feed him. What can I do about it, if he can never get enough?”
The child objected between sobs:
“No, Papà, that’s Lisetta who always eats my snack, and you never say a thing to her.”
His father glared at him disgustedly.
“You’re the spitting image of your mother: you’re always crying. Piangi e mangi—when you’re not crying you’re eating. But tell me, Commissa’: what can I do for you? Do you want to talk to Donna Concetta? I’ll call her for you right away.”
“No, don’t call anyone. I want to talk to you first.”
Sciarra turned pale and gulped.
“What do you mean, you want to talk to me? I already told you everything I know, I even talked to your Brigadier Marrone, too . . .”
Ricciardi struggled not to laugh in his face.
“Maione is his name. And I have a few other questions to ask you. Where can we sit and talk?”
The little man hesitated, looked around, and said: “Make yourself comfortable in my little place, in the booth by the front door. I’ll go get another chair and send this scourge of God to his mother, so they can have a nice long cry together, and they’ll both be happy.”
He came back a couple minutes later, staggering under the weight of a chair he’d found in the kitchen. His hat, turned around backwards, had even fallen down around his eyes.
“Ask away, Commissa’,” he sighed as he took a seat.
Ricciardi waited for the man to adjust his uniform, pulling up the sleeves and turning his hat around, before he spoke.
“All right, then, Sciarra: let’s talk about young master Ettore. I need to know as much as possible about where he goes and his routines. What he does and what he doesn’t do.”
Sciarra spread his arms.
“I don’t know much about him, Commissa’. He spends his days on his terrace, all on his own . . .”
Ricciardi interrupted the litany decisively, raising one hand.
“Let’s get one thing clear: I will take you in and I will lock you up, for obstructing an investigation. So fast it will make your head spin. I don’t believe that you’re a doorman and yet you don’t know a thing. I know for sure that you come and go, that you venture out frequently into the world. So don’t talk nonsense, and most important of all, don’t waste my time.”
Sciarra folded over as if he were under a hail of fists and boots.
“Commissa’, understand me: I have to work here, I can’t lose this position. You can’t even imagine how much my children eat, where would I turn, where could I take them with me?”
“And if you want to keep your place here, then it’s in your best interests to tell me what I want to know.”
The little man heaved a deep sigh.
“Fine, if that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get. To tell the truth, I see little enough of him, he spends the whole day on his own, out on the terrace. He takes care of his plants, he waters them himself. He doesn’t want any help: one time my son, the eldest, looked in his door because he thought he’d heard him crying, and he rudely kicked him out, in fact my poor boy tumbled headlong all the way down the stairs . . . He told him that he needs to stay in his place, that he should never dare to look into his apartment. That’s the way the young master is: sometimes he’ll give you a smile and a wink, or he’ll give candy to the children. Other times, you’d think he’d just killed someone, he’ll glare at you with pure hatred, so that the children go sobbing to hide under their mother’s skirts.”
Ricciardi wanted to know more.
“Aside from his moods, I want to know where he goes late at night, when he leaves.”
Sciarra stared at him, wide-eyed. Ricciardi could distinctly see the beads of sweat forming on his enormous nose.
“But I don’t know that! I can tell you that sometimes . . . that he goes out often, at night, yes, that’s true. While I’m watering his hydrangeas, he gives me certain lectures, he says that flowers ought to be watered in the morning, at dawn, or in the late afternoon, but I’m already up at six, and in the evening if I’m not there the children don’t eat and I go to bed late . . .”
“He goes out, you say. Where does he go?”
“I don’t know that, like I told you. One thing’s for certain, he doesn’t come and tell me about it. And he sure doesn’t tell his father; in fact, he never even goes to see him at all. One time he said to Donna Concetta: if the old man dies at night, don’t come looking for me. And for that matter, the duke doesn’t want to see his son either. He doesn’t give him a thought; he says that the boy is dead, just like the first duchess.”
Ricciardi had no intention of following the doorman’s ramblings.
“By any chance, did you ever see anyone come to pick him up? Or did he ever come home with anyone?”
Sciarra furrowed his brow with the effort of remembering.
“One night, this last winter, it was raining hard. I’d closed the front door, and no one had the keys but the duchess and the young master. That night someone started pounding on the door, fists and boots, and I woke up and opened the door. There was a car outside, with someone in it, waiting. And a chauffeur who told me to go at once to summon the young master. I went upstairs, and the door was open. I called once, twice. He came out, with a face on him . . . it looked to me like he’d been crying. He didn’t say a word to me, he just went out, climbed into the car, and drove off into the rain. But I couldn’t see who was inside, Commissa’, I swear to you.”
Ricciardi nodded, as if that was exactly what he’d been expecting.
“Can you describe the car? Was it marked in any way, I don’t know, official insignia?”
Sciarra looked away.
“No. I don’t remember, but I don’t think so. But the car was black, in any case. Big and black.”
After a moment’s thought, Ricciardi asked another question: “One last thing, Sciarra. The padlock. Are you sure that no one had the keys but the two of them?”
The little man looked the commissario in the face again.
“Yes, Commissa’. The duchess, to lock up at night,
when she came in; and the young master has an extra set, in case he needs to come in late, for whatever reason. And in the morning, it looked as if the duchess had opened the padlock: it was fastened and hanging next to the chain.”
Ricciardi stood up.
“Fine. Now take me up to talk to young master Ettore again.”
XXXI
Concetta walked into the duke’s bedroom, as if she were walking on air. She waited for her eyes to become accustomed to the dark, listening attentively for any variation in the deep wheezing rattle that came from the bed. She was sure that she hadn’t made a sound, not even the faintest rustle. She waited. A pigeon cooed on the windowsill. Out of the sound of the death rattle surfaced a raspy voice, as if the dying man were talking in his sleep:
“He’s back, isn’t he? The commissario, the young one. The one with the pale green eyes.”
In the darkness, Concetta nodded, her fingers knitted together in her lap, looking straight ahead. He couldn’t have seen her, he couldn’t have heard her. But he knew she was there, and how long she’d been there; she’d long ago ceased to be astonished at the old man’s abilities.
“It’ll all come out. We can’t prevent it.”
Concetta considered the matter. Then she said: “Not necessarily. He’s always been so careful.”
The duke said nothing for several long seconds. His cough shook his chest; his hand scrabbled around on the nightstand, cluttered with phials and ampules of medicine, and snatched up a filthy handkerchief, which he pressed to his mouth; after which he looked at it with his rheumy eyes.
“Blood. But how long is it going to take, the damned sickness? How long will it take to carry me off?”
Concetta tried to steer him away from that thought.
“What should we do? How can we protect him?”
After another fit of coughing, the duke replied:
“There’s nothing we can do. Not now. It’ll have to go the way it goes; after all, better this than . . . complete ruin.”
Concetta bowed her head and left the room.
At the door of Ettore’s apartment, Sciarra and Ricciardi found Concetta waiting for them, still and silent as a statue. As soon as he saw her, Sciarra shot a begging glance at the commissario and, at his nod, took to his heels with unmistakable relief.
The woman said: “Please wait here,” and started in to announce the new arrivals. Ricciardi stopped her, firmly, with one hand on her forearm.
“Grazie, Signora, there’s no need. I know the way.”
And he walked past her, striding into the apartment.
Ettore, in shirtsleeves and wearing a gardener’s apron, was squatting down next to a vase, clipping away. From the gramophone came symphonic music which he hummed along to, frowning. He looked up when he sensed a presence and found Ricciardi standing in front of him, just as an unusually frantic Concetta arrived on the scene. He turned and spoke to her:
“Damn it. Can’t a man be left in peace in his own home, now? What the devil’s come over you, don’t you even know how to do your job anymore?”
The woman gasped, openmouthed, as if she’d been punched in the stomach, her face red with shame. Ricciardi felt it was his duty to weigh in:
“No, in fact, she tried to stop me. But I wouldn’t let her come to warn you.”
Ettore had gotten to his feet. He’d reacquired his self-control, and now he was smiling sardonically.
“If I may ask, where did you get this haughtiness of yours? You’ve got nerve, Commissario. I thought it the first time I saw you.”
“Nerve? Why, does it take nerve to question a suspect? Or maybe there’s something else I should be worried about? What else should I be afraid of?”
Ettore continued to smile, but his eyes were shooting flames.
“Can we speak openly, Commissario? I think so, otherwise you wouldn’t have come alone. I know people who can send you into internal exile before nightfall. Or who can arrange for you to be transferred to Sicily, Calabria, or the Veneto. People who can send you to a dark little office somewhere to fill out forms eight hours a day for the next thirty years. Do you know that?”
Ricciardi hadn’t blinked.
“That’s fine, Dottore. That’s how you want me to address you, isn’t it? You reject your name and title, but not the privileges that go with them. If you choose to threaten me like this, it must mean that you feel threatened. What is it that’s threatening you, in that case? Can your highly placed friends protect you from murder charges, too?”
Ettore laughed with gusto, his head thrown back, hands on his hips.
“You’re just fabulous, with your dunderheaded stubbornness. I didn’t kill that bitch. I already told you that. I should have, but not now; ten years ago, I should have killed her. It wasn’t worth the trouble anymore.”
“And yet, the spectacle you put on the day of the funeral had the air of a public statement of some kind. And you never miss an opportunity to vent all your hatred for her. Why would you do that, other than to point suspicion away from you? And this refusal to say where you were, the other night; is your secret so unspeakable that you’d prefer to risk standing trial for murder?”
Ettore was caught off guard. His expression shifted, from sunny to serious, almost grief-stricken. His mouth twitched, as if he were about to speak, once, then twice. Then he looked Ricciardi in the eye.
“A murder trial? Prison? Those are mere trifles. I’d rather die than tell you where I was. And not because I’m hiding something about myself, let me make that point very clearly. It’s that . . . there are other people. I can’t, and I don’t want to make choices for these other people, that’s all. And so I won’t tell you where I was that night. Not now, not ever.”
Ricciardi shook his head.
“I don’t think you understand. We don’t have any other suspects who admit so openly that they hated the duchess. Whoever might come under suspicion, whoever we might accuse of the murder, would be sure to defend themselves by pointing at you.”
Ettore shrugged.
“And I’ll defend myself too, using the weapons that I possess. You have no idea of who that woman was. You can really have no idea. It could have been anyone, starting from her chief lover, or any of the hundred other lovers that she certainly took. She must have driven the journalist crazy; she played with him the way a cat toys with a mouse. That’s what she did with the old man, until she finally destroyed him.”
“But you won’t tell me where you were, or what you were doing. You force me to investigate, you understand that. I’m not the kind of person you can throw a scare into. Nothing can scare me.”
Ettore seemed baffled.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go ahead and investigate, if you think you must. For my part, I can only defend . . . the choices of the people who were with me. My own choices—I have no need to defend them. And don’t worry: I won’t use my name and my title. Neither for good nor for evil.”
Maione didn’t ask Ricciardi where he’d gone, all alone. Very simply, he assumed that if the commissario had wanted to, he would have told him about it. He only hoped that the man wasn’t getting himself into trouble: they were dealing with dangerous people on this case. He felt as if he were walking across a minefield.
“Commissa’, we’re ready. How shall we travel, when we go to call on the Capeces, by car? The address is above the Parco Margherita, in the Rione Amedeo. It’s quite a distance, in this heat.”
Ricciardi shook his head.
“No, grazie. I’d like to go on living for another three, maybe four years. I don’t drive, and if you drive the car we’ll be coming back pulled by the duchess’s eight horses. No, but I would like you to call the newspaper and alert Capece. It wouldn’t be right for us to show up at his apartment without letting him know. And if you ask me, it’s better for us to see him where he lives. We’ll be able to understand a little more about him.”
Maione, who considered himself to be a first-rate driver, looked
hurt.
“Commissa’, you just don’t want to let go of this idea you have about the way I drive. Sure, we might have hit a lamppost once or twice, but that doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t know how to drive. All the same, if that’s how you want it, that’s how it will be. Shall I make the call?”
The brigadier knew that Ricciardi didn’t like to talk on the telephone. The commissario felt as if he wasn’t reading the other person’s thoughts if he couldn’t look them in the face; and it had always given him an unpleasant impression, that soulless, black, Bakelite contraption that talked.
“Yes, go ahead. And one more thing: go change your clothes. I don’t want to knock at the door of perfectly respectable people, who are no doubt already having a hard time keeping up appearances with their neighbors, in uniform as if we were there to arrest some perpetrator.”
Lucia looked out the window at her husband, as he walked down the vicolo toward Via Toledo, dressed in civilian clothing. She was worried: he’d come home at an unusual hour, in a bad mood, and then he’d gone to change, washing up hurriedly in the kitchen sink, practically without a word to her. And it was clearly Lucia he had it in for; in fact, he’d tenderly caressed the children when they ran to greet him.
She asked him why on earth he was home at this hour. He’d told her, without looking her in the eye, that he had to do some plainclothes work and he needed his dark brown suit: had it been pressed? Of course it had been pressed, she’d replied, stung by the insinuation. And you’ll find a clean shirt in the drawer, scented of lavender, fresh and sweet-smelling. As if I’d leave your things in a mess.
He hadn’t said a word; just went to get changed. He came out of the bedroom looking fancy, with a faraway look in his eye. She asked him if he wanted something to eat, seeing how it was past lunchtime, maybe a little of the fruit that she’d bought from Ciruzzo that very morning. He’d given her a cold hard stare and then, with a chilly, “No, grazie,” he’d said goodbye with a brusque peck on the cheek and headed back out.
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