Death at Sea: Montalbano's Early Cases

by Andrea Camilleri

“So what? Apparently she’d eaten them all, and the last one was fatal.”

  There was only one cannolo left in the tray. Pasquano grabbed it.

  “Want half?”

  Montalbano declined magnanimously.

  * * *

  As soon as he got back to the station, he summoned Fazio.

  “Listen, I was wondering: Are you sure there weren’t also any apricot pits in Annarosa’s car?”

  Fazio gave him a puzzled look.

  “Chief, first you come out with the question about the pear, and now the apricots. What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know. But I feel restless.”

  “I already told you, Chief. All we found in that car was three apples.”

  Montalbano told him what Pasquano had said. And Fazio came to the same conclusion as the doctor.

  “She probably ate them all, and the last one, poor thing . . .”

  * * *

  The dinner was a real family affair.

  The commissioner and Livia spent a good hour trying to figure out whether or not they were related, since they shared the last name of Burlando; but, try as they might, they were unable to find any relation whatsoever, however distant.

  Signora Burlando cooked like a goddess, and Montalbano had a feast.

  Then the conversation turned to the accident at the Calizzi bend, and Montalbano mentioned the conclusion that Dr. Pasquano had come to.

  “Strange,” the commissioner commented.

  Everyone, Montalbano included, looked at him questioningly.

  “It’s strange,” the commissioner went on, taking an apricot from the fruit bowl in the middle of the table, “because today’s apricots are not what they used to be.”

  “I don’t understand,” said the inspector.

  “Apricots used to be much smaller, softer, and a whole lot tastier. You could put one in your mouth and then spit out the pit. Now take a look at the apricot I’m holding. It’s big and hard. You could never put the whole thing in your mouth. You have to split it in two with your fingers, like this, eat one half, then remove the pit wedged in the other half, and then eat that one, too. If you’re driving, you have no choice but to take your hands off the wheel.”

  “Come to think of it,” Montalbano cut in, “Dr. Pasquano told me the apricot pit was rather large.”

  “You see? Just as I was saying. At any rate, the girl didn’t choke to death, did she?”

  “No, Dr. Pasquano maintains that she died when she broke her neck in the crash. And she had another fatal wound in her chest, from the steering wheel. The apricot pit was only the reason why she lost control of the car.”

  “Couldn’t you please talk about something else?” Signora Burlando intervened. “It’s not very pleasant hearing about this.”

  * * *

  When they got to their car to go home to Marinella, Montalbano asked Livia if she could drive.

  “No problem.”

  They set off. A few minutes later, the inspector took an apricot out of his pocket.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “I stole it, right before getting up from the table.”

  “Are you crazy? What if they saw you?”

  “They didn’t see anything, don’t worry. Would you do me a favor?”

  “One is always supposed to say yes to the insane.”

  “Take it and eat it while still driving.”

  Livia slowed down. Then, steadying the wheel with her forearms, she split the apricot in two, using both hands, and then brought the first half to her mouth and ate it.

  “That wasn’t easy to chew, you know. If it was up to me, I would rather have eaten it in two bites.”

  “Now try to put the other half in your mouth, with the pit, as if you’d forgotten to remove it.”

  Livia tried, but a second later spat everything out.

  “You can’t swallow it that way. You’d have to swallow it whole, because with the pit in there, it’s impossible to chew. You’ll break your teeth. Nobody could be so distracted as to do something like that. You have no choice but to take the pit out first.”

  So why hadn’t Annarosa taken it out?

  3

  When he got up the following morning to go into the bathroom, to avoid waking Livia, who was in a cataleptic state, he tried not to make any noise at all and had a stupid accident, of the kind that throw you into a rage more for their idiocy than for any harm done.

  Still sleepy as he was, since the coffee was percolating just then and he hadn’t yet been able to drink any, he picked up his toothbrush, only to let it slip out of his hand and fall to the floor at his feet.

  He instinctively bent straight down, promptly crashing his nose against the edge of the sink.

  Cursing the saints through clenched teeth, he recovered the toothbrush, and as he was putting it under the spout to rinse it off, he realized his hand was covered in blood.

  And where did that come from?

  Looking in the mirror, he saw that it was pouring out of his nose from the blow.

  He raced into the kitchen, tilting his head back, opened the freezer, took out an ice cube, placed it against the bridge of his nose, and sat down. After a short while the bleeding stopped, and he cleaned his hands and face in the kitchen, drank down a mug of espresso, and went back into the bathroom.

  But as he was taking his shower he felt uneasy. There was something that didn’t add up in the connection between his grabbing the toothbrush and then noticing the blood on his hand.

  But it was all perfectly logical, wasn’t it? Why get all contorted over something so simple?

  You crouch down, pick up the toothbrush, bring it towards yourself, and at that moment a drop of blood falls from your nose and onto the hand holding the toothbrush.

  What’s so strange about that, Montalbà? Nothing?

  Then stop racking your brains over it.

  * * *

  “Livia, I’m leaving, to go to work.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “We’ll talk later.”

  “Mmmm.”

  He got in his car, drove down the dirt path that led to the main road, and then had to come to a halt. In front of him was a wall of automobiles and trucks wedged so tightly bumper to bumper that there was no way for him to slip in. The only hope was to try the “gangster method,” which consisted of advancing one centimeter at a time until the front of his car gradually blocked the headlight of the next car in line in such a way that it could no longer go forward. In this fashion, he could work his way in.

  It took him about ten minutes to complete the maneuver, after which he was in line with the rest. In front of him was a rickety old jalopy with a flapping canvas for a roof, which surely ran on wine instead of gasoline, since it was constantly swerving to either side like a drunkard.

  Behind him was a sparkling new BMW, looking all arrogant and aggressive, making clear to all concerned its great itch to pass Montalbano and the jalopy.

  Then at one point the great car’s itchy driver’s patience ran out, and, wildly honking his horn, he began to accelerate. With a swerve worthy of a Grand Prix contestant, Montalbano cleared the path for him.

  For a second the BMW pulled up beside him, then accelerated again and passed him, and at that exact moment the drunken jalopy decided to veer to the left.

  The collision was unavoidable, as the BMW didn’t have time to brake.

  Hit from behind on the left side, the jalopy swerved right, flew into the air, over the road, and came down nose-first in a shallow ditch, its two rear wheels spinning in the air.

  Having immediately slammed on his brakes, Montalbano got out of the car and ran to help out the driver of the jalopy. The man driving the BMW also got out and was running up to them. Everyone else had stopped to look on.

  Meanwhile, however, th
e driver of the jalopy had crawled out of his vehicle and stood up with flames shooting out of his eyes. He appeared uninjured.

  “Who hit me?” he asked.

  “I did,” replied the driver of the BMW.

  And he was unable to say any more, as the driver of the jalopy was all over him. The two began to exchange punches and kicks.

  “Come on, knock it off!” said Montalbano, trying to separate the two.

  Then, all at once, he froze, mouth agape.

  He was staring at one of the jalopy’s wheels, which was still turning, more and more slowly.

  It was still turning!

  Then it stopped.

  It had stopped!

  “Ahhh!”

  The yell that escaped the inspector’s lips was so wild and powerful that the two men scuffling stopped, speechless, and looked at him.

  The inspector then seemed to go insane.

  He raced back to his car, threw it into reverse, crashing against the other vehicles as if driving a bumper car at the amusement park, somehow managed to maneuver his way into the other lane, and five minutes later was opening the door to his house.

  He ran into the bedroom. Livia was still asleep.

  “Livia!”

  He’d wanted to say it softly, but the voice that came out was somewhere between a wolf’s howl and a Tarzan yell.

  Livia woke up with a start.

  And before her eyes she saw a wild-eyed, disheveled Montalbano with blood trickling from his lower lip, a consequence of his attempt to separate the two brawling men.

  And she got scared to death.

  “Oh, my God, what happened to you?”

  Montalbano raised one hand and, in a Grand Inquisitor–like gesture, pointed his index finger at her.

  “Was it spinning or not?”

  Upon hearing the question, Livia’s fear turned into pure terror.

  She shot to her feet right in bed and recoiled against the wall.

  “Calm down, Salvo, I beg you!”

  “But was it spinning?”

  “Was what spinning?”

  “The wheel.”

  “What wheel?”

  Realizing that he was getting nowhere this way, Montalbano sat down at the foot of the bed and tried to calm down.

  “Why are you standing?”

  “I dunno,” Livia said in a phony tone of unconcern.

  “Then lie back down.”

  Livia obeyed without a word. Salvo ran his hands over his face.

  “I’m sorry I woke you up like that, but there was . . .”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I just wanted to ask you something.”

  “Go ahead, please,” Livia said eagerly.

  Seeing that he was calming down, she thought it was best to give him some rope.

  “The other morning, at the bend, when we looked out over the edge to see what had happened, and we saw that overturned car on the beach below us, do you remember . . . ?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “Okay. Wasn’t one of the car’s wheels still turning?”

  “Yes. Very slowly. And it stopped as we were watching.”

  Without saying a word, Montalbano hugged her and kissed her. Then he said:

  “Go back to sleep. I’m going to the office.”

  “Who could go back to sleep after that? But can I get an explanation later?”

  “Sure.”

  * * *

  He noticed immediately that the great traffic jam had ended. Without bothering to stop at the office, he headed straight for Montelusa and a short while later pulled up outside the institute.

  “Dr. Pasquano in?”

  “Not yet. But he should be here at any moment.”

  He went out into the parking lot to smoke a cigarette. Then he saw Pasquano’s car pull in. He ran up to it and opened the door.

  “While you’re at it,” said the doctor, “why don’t you give me a little shoe shine as well?”

  Poker-faced, the inspector took a handkerchief out of his pocket and started to kneel down.

  “So it’s something really big,” said the doctor.

  “Huge.”

  “Then please hurry, I’ve got a dead body waiting for me.”

  “Are you aware that it was I who discovered the car that plunged off the Calizzi bend?”

  “No, I didn’t know. My most heartfelt compliments. So what?”

  “The accident had happened just moments before.”

  “Moments before, my ass. How can you say that?”

  “One of the wheels was still turning.”

  “Apparently you hadn’t entirely slept off your drunken stupor of the night before.”

  “The person who was with me also saw the wheel turning.”

  “What time was it?”

  “About six in the morning.”

  “Was there wind?”

  “No. Tell me something. In your opinion, how much earlier had the accident happened, which I thought occurred right before six o’clock?”

  “At least six hours before you discovered it. The girl died around midnight.”

  “And how will you react if I venture a hypothesis?”

  “It depends. Either with a kick to your grimaldis or an invitation to continue the discussion in my office.”

  “What if the accident was used to cover up a murder?”

  Dr. Pasquano thought about this for a moment.

  “Let’s go into my office.”

  “But what was it that aroused your suspicion?” was the first thing Pasquano asked as soon as they sat down.

  “Something I unconsciously realized at once, but didn’t immediately understand. When I went to check whether the girl might be still alive, I pushed aside her bloodied hair, then picked up an apple that had rolled near her head and . . . I didn’t get any blood on my hand.”

  “Because it had already clotted,” said Pasquano.

  “Right. Except that I didn’t think of that. Then I witnessed, this morning, another car accident, I saw another car wheel spinning in the air, and I tied it all together.”

  “So how do you think the whole thing went?” Pasquano asked.

  And Montalbano started talking.

  * * *

  An hour later he was in his Vigàta office with Fazio and Augello.

  “. . . so they have a violent altercation, the man grabs her and puts her in a headlock, she tries to struggle free, kicking and flailing, and before he knows it, the man finds her dead in his arms, having broken her neck. After an initial moment of panic, the man tries to think of a way to get rid of the body. And while he’s thinking, two or three hours pass without him even noticing. The more time goes by, the more the guy frets, because he hasn’t the slightest idea what he should do. So, since the squabble started right after they’d finished eating, the guy probably sits down at the table and has a glass of wine. And at that moment, it becomes perfectly clear what he has to do. He takes a big apricot, breaks it in two, takes out the pit, and, with this in his hand, bends over the girl’s body and puts the pit in her mouth, pushing it into her throat with his fingers, where the pit then gets stuck. Then he hoists the corpse onto his shoulders, sits it down in the car, tightening the seat belt over it as far as it will go, gets into the driver’s seat, goes to the Calizzi bend, stops the car right at the edge of the cliff with the motor running, gets out, moves the corpse into the driver’s seat, puts the seat belt back on it, releases the break, and gets out and starts pushing. The car lurches, hits the guardrail, and plummets below. The man probably then went and hid on the other side of the road, where the grass is high. He may even have still been there when Livia and I showed up. So, what do you guys think?”

  “It’s a nice little novel you’ve written there. To me it makes a w
hole lot of sense. But will the prosecutor like it?”

  “What about you, Fazio?”

  “I agree with Inspector Augello. What’s our evidence? A spinning tire. A simple gust of wind could—”

  “Enough of this shit! There wasn’t any wind!”

  “The car could have shifted in the sand . . .”

  “That’s more likely. So what do we do now?”

  “Let’s try to find out more about the girl,” Augello suggested.

  They all agreed on this.

  4

  As he was about to go out to Calogero’s, Livia called to tell him she would rather stay home, and at that moment he had an idea. Where had Fazio said the girl lived? Ah, yes. Via Mistretta, 48.

  He drove there. Right beside the front door to the building was a greengrocer’s shop.

  He parked, got out, and went in. The owner of the shop was a fat, fiftyish woman with a mustache and a likable manner.

  “What can I get for you?”

  “I’m a police inspector.”

  “Do you want to arrest me?” the woman said, laughing.

  “I just want to ask you for some information. Did Annarosa, the poor girl who died, buy her fruit here from you?”

  The woman’s expression changed completely.

  “The poor thing! What a terrible end! Yessir, she always came and bought her groceries here. Then she would get in her car and eat fruit as she drove.”

  “What kinds of fruit did she like?”

  “She liked apples best of all. But also pears, cherries, medlars . . . depending on the season.”

  “How about apricots?”

  “No, no apricots. She couldn’t even stand to touch them. She was allergic to them.”

  A beautiful sun was shining, but for Montalbano it immediately became a thousand times brighter.

  * * *

  Even Calogero was a little shocked at the amount of food the inspector managed to cram into his stomach.

  “What are you doing, Inspector, loading up in case of famine?”