Death in Autumn

by Magdalen Nabb

  'Did you get a good look at the young man?'

  'Not really. Signora Vogel hadn't seen me and I didn't want to stare and draw attention. She might have been embarrassed.'

  'Nevertheless, you told Antonio about it."

  'You're right. I suppose I oughtn't to have mentioned it. It was only because she was late for her appointment and he was saying that perhaps she'd taken her own advice and gone into a convent—it was a joke she'd made to us the week before. I didn't see any harm in telling him; after all, she had a right to do as she pleased. But the young man seemed hardly more than a boy, which I admit I found a bit shocking. You understand?'

  'Yes.'

  'I suppose it's having a son about that age which made me find it distasteful. She was a little younger than I am, I imagine, but even so ... Do you think all this has something to do with what happened to her?'

  'I don't know.'

  'I wish you'd sit down.'

  'Don't worry. I don't want to disturb you any longer than I have to.'

  'You must think me very rude but we eat at very regular hours because of my son. He's in his second year at university studying architecture but since my husband died he's had the business to look after as well. It's only a small firm of heating engineers but he has to be there practically all day, which means he studies late into the night. That's why I like to have supper ready as soon as he gets in. I do apologize. I just have a salad to prepare. I don't know what else I can tell you . . .'

  'Anything you remember about what the young man looked like. You must have noticed something about him even without staring.'

  'Ah yes . . . Well, I do remember he was tall and slim—at least, since he was sitting down it was probably his slimness that gave the impression he was tall.'

  She turned down the light under the soup which had begun to boil and added a pinch of salt to it.

  'What about the colour of his hair?'

  'Fairish, I think . . . maybe light brown, but I can't say for sure.'

  'You didn't catch anything they were saying?'

  'No, but. . . well, I got the impression she was pleading with him and she looked upset. She must have been upset because otherwise she would have seen me. And then ... I couldn't help noticing . . . she wrote him a cheque. Ah . . .!' She gave a little start.

  'You've remembered something else?'

  But she wasn't listening to him. Her accustomed ear had caught the sound of the lift doors closing out on the landing. 'It's my son. I can put the rice in.'

  When the Marshal got back to his Station young Brigadier Lorenzini was in the duty room.

  'Everything all right?'

  'All under control, Marshal. The boys are upstairs cooking their supper. I'll go off duty when they've finished.'

  'You can go off now. You've done far more than your share of hours today.'

  Lorenzini didn't wait to be asked twice but reached for his greatcoat. He had only been married and living out of barracks for a few months.

  The Marshal's own wife and two little boys were down in Syracuse but they would soon be joining him. As Lorenzini clattered out in a rush he tried to imagine what it would be like to lead a normal family life again, remembering the young student of architecture coming home to a bowl of hot soup in the neat dining-room where the television was already on for him. The Marshal's own quarters were in darkness. Instead of going there he went upstairs to see how the lads were faring.

  They, too, had the television on but beside it were two small closed-circuit sets for keeping a check on the gates outside. The room was steamy.

  'What are you cooking?'

  'Pasta with tomato sauce and hot peppers—Di Nuccio's speciality.'

  'Buon appetito !

  'The same to you, Marshal. Good night.'

  'Good night.'

  It was after nine o'clock. The Marshal sat down in his office to write the daily orders for tomorrow, hoping that there would be no unexpected calls on his boys. When two of them came down to take over in the duty room he went to his own quarters and switched on the light in the kitchen. He, too, put on a pan of water and reached into the cupboard for a jar of his wife's tomato preserve. It was almost eight hours since he had eaten and the smell of other people's suppers had sharpened his appetite. Waiting for the water to boil, his thoughts rambled over the various young people he had dealt with in one way and another that day. First the ones out at the villa, one of whom might well have been the lover of the forty-eight-year-old Hilde Vogel; the boy who had died of drugs at age eighteen and whose bereaved parents he had visited briefly that evening; the young man who had to run the family business while trying to study for his degree in architecture at night. Lastly, his own lads cooking their supper upstairs, all of them hundreds of miles from their own homes and families. It was as if all these youngsters lived in completely different worlds. Especially the ones at the villa whose world the Marshal couldn't comprehend at all.

  Well, he had done his best that day, tomorrow was his day off, and with any luck the Captain would have no further use for him on the Vogel case which left a dirty taste in his mouth. He would be glad not to be involved in it any further. He wasn't to know that very soon something was to happen which would involve him even more deeply and cause him about as much distress as any case had ever done before.

  CHAPTER 6

  The trouble with Guarnaccia, Captain Maestrangelo was thinking as his driver struggled through the lunch-time traffic taking him out to a new industrial suburb, was that he never actually said anything much. He just seemed to breathe unease or suspicion. It was true that once he started like that he would pursue his quarry doggedly until he had tracked him down, if it took him years. But they hadn't got years. What they had got was a rather snappish young Substitute Prosecutor called Bandini in charge of the case and who had made it clear that he wanted some fast action. The Captain had never liked him and he certainly wasn't the sort to appreciate the ponderous Marshal. The car stopped at a busy crossing to let a horde of youngsters in black tunics pour across the street on their way home from some nearby school.

  He had been tempted to ring the Marshal that morning as soon as he had finished reading the report he had sent over but he had put the receiver down again without asking for the number. After all, it was his day off. The Captain was pushing all his men too hard, he knew. In the end, after comparing Guarnaccia's report with the statements made by the hotel staff, he had decided to go out by himself.

  The car moved off again and joined the queue at the next traffic lights.

  The trouble was that they had a lot of odd facts, none of which seemed to link up. According to the hotel receptionist, Hilde Vogel had taken periodic trips abroad. Paris, Vienna and Brussels were some of the ones he remembered. All the tenants at the villa were young foreigners, which suggested that she might have picked them up on these trips, and that the newspaper adverts, if they existed at all, were a blind. The agent at Greve had been able to tell the local Marshal nothing other than that he received and answered the inquiries that came in and prepared the contracts.

  But if she had indeed picked them up like that, would they be paying the high rent? That wasn't fictional, at any rate, the agent had been able to assure them of that.

  The car was now travelling along a broad road with new factories on each side interspersed with petrol stations and high rise apartment blocks.

  Only two of the facts that had emerged appeared to have something in common. About a month before her death, Hilde Vogel had been seen in a restaurant with a tall young man, and at about that period a tall man had visited her at the Riverside Hotel. These facts didn't coincide with the murder but at least they seemed to coincide with each other.

  'Left here, I think,' the driver said suddenly, interrupting the Captain's thoughts. 'Ugly area, this.'

  The car pulled up outside a block of flats identical to all the other blocks. It was bright and sunny but a cool wind was blowing scraps of paper along the wide street.r />
  'Wait for me here,' the Captain said, getting out. 'I shouldn't be more than half an hour.'

  Going up to the fifth floor in the cramped lift, he wished again that the Marshal were with him. He was better at this sort of thing.

  'Signora Querci?'

  The young woman who opened the door looked surprised at first but she realized almost immediately what he had come about.

  'I expect it's my husband you want to talk to?'

  'Yes. I hope he's awake.'

  'Come in.' A little girl had appeared and was staring up at the Captain, clutching all the while at her mother's skirts. 'I'm sorry to disturb you at home but it's rather urgent.' 'That's all right; we've just eaten.'

  Nevertheless, she took him into the small kitchen where the table had been cleared of plates, and a typewriter set up. The little girl followed them in and climbed on to a stool at the corner of the table where there was an exercise book and some coloured felt tips. The small flat was very warm and a smell of cooking still hung in the air.

  'I do a bit of typing for the extra money.' The young woman had a pretty, almost childish face with a pronounced turned-up nose, but her plump figure, too broad in the hips, suggested she was in her mid-thirties. 'My husband will be in shortly. He always goes down to buy cigarettes after lunch and have a coffee in the bar. I never drink it. Please sit down.'

  'Thank you.' The little girl continued staring at the Captain, but when he looked at her she ducked her head and began colouring fiercely.

  'I'm sure my husband won't be long,' repeated the woman, not knowing what else to say. After a short silence she suddenly seemed to feel she'd been rude and added, 'I'm sorry, I can't even offer you a coffee. My husband always goes to the bar, you see, and I don't . . .'

  'Please don't worry. I've already had coffee,' lied the Captain, who hadn't even managed to have lunch. 'Your husband doesn't sleep during the day?'

  'Only until lunch-time. Otherwise he'd have no life at all.'

  'I understand. It must be difficult for you, too.'

  'Difficult? You can't imagine. It's no joke being alone at night in an area like this. I have good neighbours, but even so, after eight years of it I've had enough—'

  She stopped suddenly and said to the child, 'Go in the other room and do your homework.'

  'I'm doing it here.'

  'Do as you're told. Go on.'

  The little girl climbed down from her stool and picked up her book and colours, sneaking a last look at the uniformed man as she went out.

  'I've worked in a hotel myself,' the woman went on as soon as the door closed. 'In fact, that's how we met, in Milan.' She seemed glad enough to have someone to talk to now that her initial shyness had worn off. 'I was always dog-tired and it's not as though the pay's anything to write home about. If I had my way he'd get out, and I've told him so, but he has no push.'

  The Captain remembered Guarnaccia's description of the soft-spoken night porter who seemed contented enough with his lot.

  'He's a good husband, don't get me wrong, but hotel work isn't right for him. Then when a nasty business like this happens you're involved whether you had anything to do with it or not. He should have got out before, when we left Milan.'

  'I expect it's difficult to find anything else.'

  'Not at all, that's just the point! You see, my father has a business, a grocer's shop in the centre;—I was born and brought up here—and he'd gladly sell it to us on instalments. It's more than time he retired. But with men pride always comes first, even before the good of the family, and Mario won't hear of it until he can get together the sort of deposit that my father could get from anyone else. Well, you can imagine trying to save anything on a night porter's salary! I've been on at him for years but he won't budge—Hush! That's him now.'

  As the front door closed quietly they heard the little girl's voice: 'There's a carabiniere! Can I come in the kitchen with you?'

  'No. Get on with your homework, there's a good girl.'

  'You said you'd help me. You promised.'

  'I will, in just a minute. Off you go.'

  The kitchen door opened. Mario Querci looked different, younger, in the jeans and anorak he was wearing. The Captain had only seen him in the black suit he wore on duty at the Riverside.

  'I'm sorry to disturb you at home,' began the Captain.

  'That's all right. I suppose it's about Signora Vogel again—don't get up, I'll sit here.'

  The kitchen was overcrowded with three adults in it. A quarrel could be heard going on in the flat next door.

  'I told the Marshal everything I knew,' Querci said.

  'Yes, I realize that. In fact, it's about something I read in your statement that I wanted to ask you. You said a man had been to see Hilde Vogel one night about a month before.'

  'That's right. But I said at the time I couldn't remember the exact date and I've no way of checking since he wasn't a guest.'

  'I understand that. What would be helpful would be a clearer description of the man.'

  'I see. The trouble is, so many people come and go . . .' 'The thing that interests me is his age.'

  'Well . . . I'm no hand at judging people's ages, but I'd say he was fiftyish.'

  •Fiftyish . . .'

  The Captain's disappointment must have shown on his face because Querci went on: 'I told you I'm no judge. I could be wrong by five years either way.'

  But not by thirty years! So they were back where they started with a lot of unrelated facts.

  'His hair was grey, I'm pretty sure of that,' went on Querci, still trying to be helpful.

  'I see. Well, thank you. I apologize again for having disturbed you.' The Captain stood up.

  It was Signora Querci who showed him out. From the tiny entrance hall he caught a glimpse of what should have been the living-room. There was a three-piece suite there but the two armchairs had been stacked, one upside down on the other, and the room had been made into a bedroom for the little girl who was lying there on a folding bed with her book and colours.

  At the door, Signora Querci glanced back over her shoulder as if she would have liked to say something to him privately, but the flat was so small you could hear every word. In the end she came out on the landing.

  'I just wanted to say . . you won't involve him any more than you have to? In spite of what I said, he's a good man. It's just that he's unlucky.' She seemed genuinely distressed, perhaps a little ashamed of herself. 'I shouldn't have spoken as I did, but there are times . . . cooped up here all day. I hope you understand.'

  'Signora, please don't worry about it. It sometimes helps to unburden yourself to an outsider.'

  'That's it exactly; To an outsider you can say things you wouldn't normally say.'

  But not, thought the Captain, going back down in the lift, in this job. He was tempted to stop off for a moment at Pitti—just to keep Guarnaccia up to date—but again he reminded himself that it was the Marshal's day ofFand that he no doubt had his own problems to worry about.

  'No, no! You're not following me—don't keep interrupting.' 'I'm not interrupting. All I asked was if you could hear me!'

  'Don't shout. Of course I can hear you.'

  But the Marshal's wife was never convinced, even though she could hear him perfectly well. To make matters worse, the line kept fading for a few seconds every so often, so that he would miss something she said, causing her to shout even more. He was growing a bit red in the face.

  'What I'm trying to say is that the boys need the space more than we do. I'm not talking about moving the beds round in their room but giving them our room which is bigger—after all, where are they going to study? We can manage with less space.'

  'I don't see why you can't wait till we get up there to decide. Salva? Can you hear me?'

  'Because it'll be chaos. I'm trying to get things sorted out.'

  'I'd rather you waited. In any case, why can't they study in the kitchen like they've always done, where I can keep my eye on them?'


  'With the television there?'

  'We'll move the television. There's the lounge.'

  'There's no need to shout, I can—'

  'Just wait till I get there. I'll sort it out. You keep phoning up and it's costing a fortune. You know when we got the telephone put in we agreed to phone once a week as usual.' In fact, she had phoned him just as often, each time with some new problem they hadn't thought about.

  'In that case, leave the boys with my sister, like we suggested before and you come up first and see to things.'

  'I was the one who suggested it and you said no!'

  'Well, now I'm saying yes. After all, if you won't let me do anything .. .'

  'All right. I'll speak to Nunziata and see if she's still willing. Have you been busy?'

  'Fairly. The usual drug problems.' He had no desire to talk about the Vogel case which he hoped he'd finished with.

  'Oh dear, Salva ... I'm beginning to worry about the boys. After all, they're growing up. You don't get that sort of thing going on here, not like in Florence.'

  'We can't change our minds now. You know I could have been waiting years for a posting down there.'

  'I suppose so . . .'

  'Don't start worrying. They'll be all right.'

  But he spent the rest of the night worrying about it himself, and hardly got any sleep at all. Every time he drifted into a doze he would have the same dream of trying to comfort the parents of the drug death boy only to realize that it was his own children they were weeping over and that their son was there with them. Then he would go searching for his two boys all over Florence until he remembered they were still in Syracuse. He was only too relieved to find himself properly awake well before the alarm went off; nevertheless, he felt heavy and depressed all morning and the three hours he was obliged to spend on tedious paperwork did nothing to distract him. When a distraction did arrive he had just settled into his armchair for a rest after lunch. And that wasn't the only reason why it was an unwelcome one.