The Murdered Banker

by Augusto De Angelis

  His voice frosty once more, the inspector ordered Macchi: “Well in any case it will be easy for you not to come in here until I call you.”

  Back in the drawing room, he closed the door carefully. His movements had slowed, as if he wanted to give his mind time to calm down completely. When he turned to Maria Giovanna, he was proper and polite. He smiled.

  The young woman was the first to speak, and she wasn’t the least bit disturbed or intimidated by a man who presented himself as a proper interrogator.

  “Where is Aurigi?”

  “Not far away. Do you wish to speak to him?”

  “I would be grateful to do so,” whispered Maria Giovanna. She suddenly sounded insecure.

  “To him first, or to me?” De Vincenzi asked, studying her.

  “To you. You must have heard what I said…”

  “Of course I heard it, but hearing doesn’t mean understanding, and above all it does not mean believing.”

  The young woman begged him. “You must believe me! I’m telling the truth.”

  “A sad truth, signorina! Which, if it were actually so, would not save anything or anyone.”

  “Unfortunately by this point there’s nothing left to save!”

  Such was the desperation in her words that even De Vincenzi felt troubled by them.

  “However,” he said energetically, controlling himself, “I need to understand.” He went on, his voice full of affection and cordiality, “And as for complete ruin, it’s never as certain as it might seem when one is momentarily bewildered.”

  A long shudder coursed through the young woman. She kept quiet, trying to contain a surge of desperation that threatened to spill out of her. But she couldn’t, and she covered her face with her hands.

  “What’s happened to me in a single day is terrible. You must have pity on me!”

  “How could I fail to, signorina?”

  He led her to an armchair and helped her to sit down. She moved like a robot. When he saw her nearly settled, he asked gently, “Why did you accuse yourself of killing Garlini, Signorina Marchionni?”

  The young woman found a last surge of resistance.

  “Because I did kill him!” she shouted.

  “But why did you kill him—you?”

  “Isn’t it enough for me to tell you that I did it?”

  But the inspector was looking at her so intently that she whispered without realizing, “There are things one doesn’t confess to…”

  “Yes… and sometimes it’s easier to confess to a crime one has not committed.”

  Maria Giovanna watched him, then tossed her head and turned her gaze away. She seemed calm. With her hands on her knees, she looked up and said slowly, “You are wrong not to believe me. I really did kill Garlini.”

  De Vincenzi took a chair and sat down in front of her.

  “Shall we say that you would benefit from extenuating circumstances if you had killed him?”

  Maria Giovanna started. She looked the inspector straight in the face now, terrified, and she shouted at him, as if trying to distance herself from a threat.

  “Why do you say that? What do you know? I beg you—tell me what you know!”

  “Calm down. What I may know changes neither what happened nor the course of events.”

  Two tears appeared in Maria Giovanna’s eyes.

  “Oh, believe me, believe me, and don’t try to find out anything else!”

  “You physically killed a man by shooting him in the temple with a revolver…”

  He uttered these words slowly, enunciating clearly, marking every syllable. He paused before suddenly getting up and walking towards the fireplace. He held out his hand to indicate the pendulum clock.

  “And after you did all this, you, Contessina Marchionni, adjusted this clock, so that it would show an hour ahead?”

  Profoundly amazed, Maria Giovanna asked, “What clock? What are you saying? I didn’t touch that clock.”

  The inspector’s yelp was triumphant.

  “You see! You did not touch that clock. I was absolutely convinced of it. And for that reason, you cannot have killed Garlini!”

  “But what are you saying? What does the clock have to do with anything?” Maria Giovanna repeated.

  De Vincenzi recovered his calm indifference.

  “Don’t try to understand. And believe me, it’s too difficult to get yourself convicted for a crime you did not commit. More difficult than getting convicted for one you have committed!” His tone was unchanged when he suddenly asked, “Contessina Marchionni, where were you last night from eleven-thirty until one?”

  The cry of victory was now hers. “In this house!”

  “I know,” De Vincenzi said with the same tranquillity, and from his waistcoat pocket he took the little lapis tube of lipstick that Maccari had found under the sofa. He looked at it for a moment and held it out to the young woman.

  “If you’ll allow me… Look—this belongs to you.”

  The contessina took the little golden object. She polished it and asked him, “Where did you find this?”

  “Here, on the floor in this room. It’s an innocuous tube of lipstick… artificial cinnabar… lights up the face… a convention and a concession. A sign of life, certainly, and you, signorina, you lost it here… you dropped it in this house.”

  After a brief silence he continued. “But it’s not the only thing you lost last night in this house, Contessina…”

  Maria Giovanna sighed painfully, as if to herself. “It’s true! I also lost my wits here.”

  De Vincenzi approached her and said in a voice like a whisper, “And a phial of poison, which can rob you of your wits and your life!”

  It hardly seemed possible, but Maria Giovanna went paler still. She almost felt dizzy. “How do you know?”

  “Know? I didn’t know the phial was yours. You, however, didn’t think you had lost it.”

  The young woman wrung her hands in despair and moaned, “Oh, but this is torture!”

  “Don’t you want to tell me what really happened in here last night?”

  He began pacing the room, still talking. “Sooner or later, I’ll discover the whole truth… It’s a closed circle, this. Closed within the walls of this apartment. Only a few people, and they are all in here. Shall I name them?”

  Terrified, Maria Giovanna screamed, “I can’t… I can’t take any more!” And she fell back into her chair.

  10

  A Great Love

  The inspector waited for some time for Maria Giovanna to calm down.

  He watched her sobbing, her face in her hands, the tremors coming regularly. Her pain was terrible. He could have sworn her eyes were dry. They had to be dry and barren. It wasn’t one of those babyish sobs, which free and cleanse one, but a real crisis of fear and anguish. Rebellion against something stronger, something cruel. A revolt against something that could no longer be avoided.

  Under the brim of her black felt hat, a mass of blonde hair could be seen softly gathered at the nape of her neck, which was white and draped with gold.

  De Vincenzi was still waiting.

  Little by little her sobbing ceased and her shoulders stopped shaking. The young woman slowly revived and uncovered her face. Her large, deep-set eyes were pleading. She looked humbly at De Vincenzi, still standing in front of her.

  “Why won’t you believe me? Believe me, and stop questioning me—it’s torture. Accept my confession!”

  The inspector spoke quite gently to her. “Shall we try to find the truth together? The truth that you yourself are ignoring? Only when we’ve looked it squarely in the face will we be able to try to salvage whatever has not yet sunk to the bottom.”

  Maria Giovanna continued to look at him without speaking.

  “As long as you would like to, Signorina Marchionni. For the love you feel for yourself, your father, for…”

  He was about to mention Giannetto, but he stopped himself. The pale face of that other man had appeared to him, with its reg
ular lines, slender and transparent as crystal… the man upstairs in the attic apartment, with all that furniture that was too nice for it.

  Why not play that card now?

  Time was of the essence. This wasn’t the usual sort of investigation, to be conducted with bureaucratic plodding. Every minute was precious.

  He looked at the door to the parlour, behind which the count must be waiting, and hesitated. Perhaps the old man was listening.

  He shrugged. He knew that once everything was finished, once the truth was revealed, the ground would be seeded with ruin.

  “For the love you feel for… Remigio Altieri.” He pronounced it slowly, lowering his voice.

  The young lady jumped to her feet, her face suddenly alight, her eyes flashing, her lips trembling with indignity.

  “How dare you! Why do you mention that name?”

  De Vincenzi attempted to calm her. He actually preferred her like this: ready to fight, and full of energy for it.

  “Why did you mention him? Who gave you the right to root around in my life? How did you know?”

  “You’re forgetting that Remigio Altieri lives in the same building.”

  A light had gone on in his mind: “la signorina”, as the porter’s wife and servant had called her, turned up almost every day in via Monforte, going by the lodge—but not always going to Aurigi.

  “… and you don’t want to recall that you came almost every day to visit him, up there, on the top floor…”

  It was as if she’d collapsed. The blood that had risen to her cheeks now rushed back to her heart, leaving her face wan and white as marble.

  “How did you know?” she whispered.

  “It doesn’t matter how I found out. The important thing is that Aurigi doesn’t yet know anything.”

  And he pointed at the closed door to the dining room.

  Maria Giovanna followed his gaze.

  “Is he in there?” she asked, her voice a mere thread.

  “In there, under arrest,” the inspector stated firmly. “And perhaps he would prefer—”

  “I’ll tell him myself!” Maria Giovanna declared, stiffening. “I would have told him some time ago if—”

  But she stopped.

  “Well, none of this comes into it.”

  She had recovered her energy once more. De Vincenzi knew she would fight tooth and nail, like a tiger, now that her secret had been discovered. He would need to play it close now if he didn’t want to forfeit his advantage.

  But was his position really advantageous? Or had he lost his front? Wasn’t he groping around again without having uncovered anything essential or concrete? Running here and there after ephemeral lights appearing in the shadows like the mythical, wind-blown will o’ the wisp?

  “Leave Remigio Altieri out of this for good!”

  “For me that’s not possible, Signorina Marchionni. Until I know who killed Garlini, it’s impossible for me to exclude anyone. Signor Altieri must answer for himself, just like all the others.”

  “Oh no!” Her shout was muffled but nevertheless awful. There was such passion contained in it that shivers went right up the inspector’s spine: he had the actual physical sensation of an intense electrical vibration.

  How she loved him!

  But why, then? How had she come to the point of accusing herself of having killed someone so as to save Giannetto?

  She had actually been in the house that night. And she had lost a phial of poison, a tube of lipstick.

  But she hadn’t killed anyone. She couldn’t have.

  Why couldn’t it have been her? the inspector asked himself once more. He shot a quick glance at the clock, the key to the mystery.

  Maria Giovanna stood tall before the inspector, extremely proud, her flashing eyes fixed on him.

  “Oh no!” she repeated. “You will not bring Remigio Altieri into all this. He has nothing to do with it. He is blameless apart from loving me, just as I love him. Because I love him. It would have taken something much greater and more powerful than our own love and our instinct for preservation for me to have ruined his life and mine. But I love him, don’t you understand? I love no one but him! And perhaps by now I have indeed ruined his life! But to bring him into all this? No! Don’t you understand that all this drama we’re going through is despicable? And he is pure! He’s above suspicion!”

  She spoke rapidly but her voice remained quiet. She stopped and waited.

  “Well, all this may be so,” said De Vincenzi, “but I must know.” He went to the door.

  “Where are you going?” The young woman followed him and stood ready to fling herself in his way.

  De Vincenzi did not turn around.

  “Where are you going?” she repeated, and she took him by the arm.

  “To his place.” And, liberating himself from her grip, he continued walking. He opened the door.

  “Stop! What do you want to know from him? I’ll tell you everything—what there is to tell, that is… what I know… but don’t question him. Don’t let him know about this horrible thing. What do you think he can tell you?”

  De Vincenzi stopped.

  “Why did he come to live in this building?”

  Maria Giovanna looked at him as if she were trying to read in his eyes just how much he already knew.

  “But he didn’t come here… he was here. I think he has always lived here.”

  “No. It’s been barely two years.”

  “Oh!”

  “Why do you keep lying?”

  “But it’s true. He came to live here when I got engaged to Giannetto Aurigi.”

  “So why did you get engaged to Aurigi if you didn’t love him, and you loved someone else?”

  The young woman hesitated. She didn’t speak. Although she seemed confused, nothing about her betrayed shame or offended modesty.

  Instead—a new anguish.

  “Why are you doing this?” De Vincenzi insisted, acting the accuser. He stood with his hand on the latch, ready to open the door.

  “I can’t tell you that. I can’t tell you yet. There was a reason and it was ironclad, terrible, gnawing, like divine punishment. But I can’t reveal it. And allow me to hope that I’ll never have to reveal it.”

  De Vincenzi said nothing. He watched her. She seemed sincere. And in any case, everything about her breathed such passion, such exclusive, almost violent love for the other man—the young man in the attic—that it was hard to imagine her yielding to renunciation without some formidable reason that was stronger than her or her ability to fight.

  “Don’t tell me. Perhaps it won’t enter into all this. But it’s a fact that when Remigio Altieri knew you had become engaged to someone else, a certain Giannetto Aurigi, he wanted to come and live in this building. Such was his level of feeling… or the calculation that pushed him to do this, and you to consent to it.”

  “Why are you talking about calculations?” the young woman exclaimed reproachfully. “I’d hoped you understood… that you were human…”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  “What do I need to explain? Altieri has been my French teacher since I was a young girl. Does that suggest he was too young himself? It’s true! Papa preferred him to other professors… because… because he was less expensive… Papa has always been very careful with money.”

  She hurried over the last sentence, blushing, as if it were not the real reason and there was another.

  She tried straightaway to brush it aside, skip over it.

  “It was fate, I’m telling you! I could not have met him any other way. I had to meet him like that. And I loved him. Oh, not right away, naturally. In the first few years I didn’t notice that he had feelings for me, or the ones that were bubbling up in my heart, day by day. He would never have dared to confess it to me, if one day… I must tell you that in the past few years, when I was already a young woman… a free signorina, or nearly, because my father has always given me a liberal education, and a sense of
responsibility towards myself and others… very often Altieri and I took a walk during our lesson. As for the rest, it was only a matter of conversations in French, and not actual lessons. That day, around three years ago now, we had gone outside the city, beyond Acquabella. It was our favourite walk. A storm caught us out, one of those autumn downpours that break out suddenly and seem to drench the earth. We had gone beyond the railway line and we were in open countryside beyond the farms and houses. There was a bank with a ditch in it, the earth curved inwards down there to make a sort of vault… We ran to hide in that shelter. It was narrow, water was coming in sideways… We leant against each other, better than we could on the ground… and I found myself in his arms. It was like a flash of lightning! That embrace revealed me to myself. When we got back home, I knew I loved him.”

  She told him the story, reliving it in her memory, and so absorbed by it that she forgot the present realities. Her eyes shone, her cheeks burned.

  “There you have it!” she said. And it really seemed to her that there was nothing more to be said. For her, everything began and ended with that love.

  “And then?” the inspector asked gently. He too was moved and also, strangely upset somehow. He felt a great tenderness, an unexpected desire to do good, to sow happiness around him.

  “And then?” he repeated. “Go on. I understand you.”

  “Yes,” Maria Giovanna exclaimed, “perhaps you do understand me! But the rest is more difficult. I can’t tell you everything. You must believe me, even if what I’m saying is unclear.”

  She gathered her thoughts for a moment.

  De Vincenzi took his hand from the latch. It was now pointless to threaten her with going upstairs to see Remigio. Everything appeared to him to be so logical, so natural, so good.

  “We had days of ecstasy. I felt as if I were in another world, as if I were no longer myself. Remigio came every day for my lesson… but now we had to talk about us, about our love. Remigio was making plans, and would have accepted any sacrifice. He would double his workload. He had to get to the point where he could find a position. I didn’t, however, want to hide anything from my parents. I wanted them to know. Remigio told me the story of his father and I, too, felt I could abandon my family, flee with him as his mother had done… I didn’t have the courage, though, to speak to Papa about it right away. But one morning my mamma questioned me. A mother misses nothing that’s going on in her daughter’s heart. I didn’t know how to keep quiet, and I wouldn’t lie to her, so I told her everything. My mamma adores me… I thought she’d open her arms to me, full of all the happiness I knew. But instead she burst into tears.”