The Death of an Irish Consul

by Bartholomew Gill

  “Not yet. Tell me honestly, Peter—what do you know about this Foster? What are your”—he waved his hand—“musings about his involvement in this thing? And Rattei’s? What are all the facts?”

  McGarr didn’t hesitate to tell Falchi. If Foster and Rattei were co-plotters in these murders, then he’d need all the help he could muster to get them back to Ireland after they were tried in Italy. “Foster’s a former spy whom SIS did dirty. You know—low pension, low-pay desk job. He grew to hate the Service. He’s probably always been slightly psychotic. It takes a special sort of person to kill for hire. And the malaise could have surfaced with his inactivity. Perhaps he jumped at the first chance to get free of the Service that was offered him, ironically by Hitchcock and Browne. Perhaps he then discovered how they were involved in the Tartan Oil venture and went with the news to Rattei. Perhaps they then discovered a mutual loathing for Hitchcock, Browne, Cummings, and the sort of, you know, aristocratic Englishmen they were. Perhaps they simply plotted to kill the three of them and were so all consumed with that passion they neglected so many blatantly incriminating details. Perhaps and perhaps and perhaps. I’d give anything to talk to Foster or Rattei.”

  “So would I,” Falchi said bleakly.

  “Where do you suppose he is?”

  “Who?”

  “Rattei.”

  “In Chiusdino. He’s got a big villa down there. It’s beautiful—set in the wooded hills and surrounded by vineyards.”

  “Think he’d see me?”

  Falchi hunched his shoulders, but his eyes were still following the blond Danish women. “I don’t know. Perhaps. He’s probably surrounded by packs of Roman lawyers. Those leeches would have moved in at the first hint of trouble and scandal. They’re even more merciless than certain carabinieri high officials from that dunghill.”

  “Chiusdino?” McGarr asked. “I rather like that little town.”

  “No—Rome. Rome!” Falchi turned to McGarr. “Lookit, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll try to get to Foster after the pompous bastards from the south are through with him. I won’t let up on him night and day until he confesses to something. When he does, you’ll be the first to know. That’s a promise, and I’ll tell you all the details.

  “You, in the meantime, will keep me informed of all your shenanigans.” He said the last word in English. “Like that Irish touch?”

  It was an English touch, but McGarr didn’t correct him.

  “What about the murders in Ireland?”

  McGarr said, “He’ll say nothing about those. We still have a death penalty in my country, Carlo, and he knows we’ve only got the barest case against him. He’s a professional and made quite sure of that himself. My bet is that there were two payments, either from Rattei himself or from somebody else.”

  “Who must be terribly wealthy.”

  McGarr nodded. “To reward him for framing Rattei or for keeping his mouth shut if Rattei was his coconspirator.” Just then something else occurred to McGarr. “Could it be that Rattei, out of some warped sense of manly pride, wants to show the world he has actually carried out his threat on Cummings’s life?”

  That stopped Falchi. “Could be. He’s like that, you know. Fiercely proud. Then, what about the murders in Ireland?”

  “Could be Foster was working on his own hook. Could be the Tartan Oil deal offended Rattei’s heightened sense of manly pride as well—you know, that they should be working for him and using their inside information to fill their own pockets too.”

  “Ah, yes—it could be many things. We’ll have to work hard, I fear. But, first, a little divertiménto.” Falchi turned to the women and said in an English as fluent as McGarr’s Italian, “The dispute regarding this pulpit involves the question of who actually is responsible for it. We know this, that Nicola Pisano carved a pulpit in the cathedral at Pisa eight years after this one was finished. Now, Pisano’s at Pisa is octagonal in shape instead of hexagonal like this one, and, above all, the movement of the figures is denser and more complex here.

  “I believe Pisano’s pupil, the justly famous Arnolfo di Cambio, is responsible for this undeniable masterpiece. And isn’t it that, ladies? Arnolfo di Cambio, of course, is also responsible for such other trifles as the original design of the Cathedral of Santa Maria of the Flowers, that is to say, Tuscany’s other duomo in Firenze, and the Signoria Palace, Tuscany’s other town hall. But what you see before you is truly the master’s ne plus ultra. Buildings are the concern of masons and joiners; sculpture is a thing of the spirit.”

  The Danish women were wide-eyed.

  The Italian guide had walked away in disgust. Evidently, Falchi horned in like this often, whenever, McGarr supposed, the crowd contained blonds.

  When he rang up the Excelsior, McGarr found that Noreen was still upset. “I can’t seem to put it out of my mind, Peter.”

  “Well, why don’t you do something different, something interesting. I know—why don’t you take Bernie and Hughie to Florence for the day? Rent a car, show them what the place is like. Go to the galleries, eat at Il Latini.” It was McGarr’s favorite restaurant in that city. When the owner had visited Ireland a year before, he had stayed at McGarr’s house in Rathmines. One of the man’s sons was studying philosophy at Trinity. “All right.” She seemed cheered already. “Bernie told me this morning that you should call his room. He’s heard from Madigan in London.”

  McCarr jiggled the yoke of the phone and asked the hotel switchboard operator to ring McKeon’s rooms.

  McKeon said, “Madigan got a line on Rattei. It’s nothing he can prove, mind you, but scuttlebutt has it Rattei has been visiting a certain house that specializes in sweet assignations for only extremely well-heeled gents and the escorts they have chosen for themselves. It’s merely the place that’s offered, you see. I’ve got the address here someplace. Ah, yes—Thirty-eight West Road, Surrey. Now, the interesting part is that he only ever has been seen there with one woman, and she is tall, dark, and exquisite.”

  McGarr thanked McKeon and hung up. He had never imagined that Rattei, given his fiery personality, could have maintained a platonic thirty-year love affair.

  It was a short walk from the café in which he had made the phone calls on Via Diacceto, through the Piazza Independenzia, to the Via di Citta, the Piazza del Campo, and the Ricasoli residence. McGarr enjoyed these narrow, winding streets. There were no cars. People were forced to stop and talk to each other.

  In the Piazza del Campo, workers were beginning to take down the viewing stands.

  Liam O’Shaughnessy met him at the door of the Palazzo Ricasoli. Several carabinieri were also stationed there.

  “What’s up?” McGarr asked him.

  “A couple of things. First, Battagliatti arrived early. After him came a limousine a block long, something old like a Bugatti. It was Rattei. And he was a different man from the one we interviewed on the oil derrick. First, he was dressed in a spanking blue suit with a silver gray silk tie and a shirt the same color but with blue polka dots to match. And his shoes—get this!—they were silver as well. Cripes, the value of the rings on his fingers was more than five years of my take-home pay.

  “Then he got into a shouting match with Battagliatti in the foyer of the palazzo, and one of the maids later told me the signora refused to see him. I could hear him bellowing at her down here—how she couldn’t deny him now, how he knew she loved him and he was tired of waiting and would give her only one week to decide. Well, he worked himself up into such a state he threw a punch at one of Battagliatti’s henchmen when he left. That’s the one over there with the shiner. Rattei’s in good shape. That gorilla went down like he got hit by a hammer.” O’Shaughnessy had nodded his head in the direction of a squat but muscular young man who was leaning against the fender of a gray Lancia touring car that had a small red flag flying from a standard on the other side. The man was dabbing at his left eye with a wet bar towel from the café across the piazza.

  “But Battagliatti has
been with her all morning. It seems she’ll see only him. To tell you the truth, I don’t care much for him. He reminds me of a weasel. He’s far too taken with this whole business for my money. Doesn’t he have a job?”

  “No,” said McGarr. “He’s a politician.”

  They started up the stairs.

  “Hasn’t anybody else tried to see her?”

  “Sure—the whole gang we met at the embassy in London, but Battagliatti won’t have any of it. Says she’s indisposed and will see them when Cummings is laid out or at the funeral. He won’t even talk to me. Orders me around like I was some guard dog. I’ve been thinking I’m going to tell him where to get off the train next time.”

  “Go ahead. You’ve got my O.K. But don’t put your hands on him. Remember—people fight with their mouths in this country, and they’ve got a law that claps the first person to use his hands, regardless of the cause, in the can.” Through McGarr’s mind flashed the thought that in Ireland his people were fighting with bombs, random shootings, and ambushes, and he felt very sad.

  O’Shaughnessy said, “And here’s another stopper for you. Cummings is going to have a church funeral. He was a Catholic!”

  “So?”

  “So, I thought all those”—O’Shaughnessy cleared his throat slightly—“in London were Protestants.”

  “It’s easy to start thinking like that where we’re from. Too easy. The way I understand it, there are some pretty powerful English Roman Catholics. Their families never became Protestant.”

  “More power to them,” said O’Shaughnessy. He was a man who was what he was, and nothing could change him from that.

  McGarr, on the other hand, could never quite forget the part the Church had played during the Famine and its continuing attempt to keep Ireland isolated, provincial, and “preserved” as “The Holy Isle.” Otherwise, McGarr too was what he was. He had been born a Catholic into a family that was only nominally so. His father had only gone to church because the pubs weren’t open during those hours. Just to make conversation as they continued up the stairs, he said, “Hell—Alexander Pope was a Catholic.”

  “He probably would have to be with a name like that.” O’Shaughnessy was in no sense a learned man, although he was quite acute in most matters.

  McGarr opened the door of the foyer to the Ricasoli apartments, and there stood Battagliatti, right in front of them, smiling. McGarr couldn’t see his eyes because his glasses mirrored the light from the doorway below. McGarr wondered if Battagliatti had heard them talking. The old hallway made voices echo.

  “Signor McGarr, how nice to see you again. I caught a glimpse of you crossing the piazza.” He offered his hand. It was limp when McGarr took it. “I suppose you’ve come to see Enna. I’m sorry, she’s indisposed at the moment. I know you can understand that she wants to cooperate with you and the other police in whose jurisdiction you are presently operating, but, let us remember, she was married to the man for over thirty years, and, what with the violence and all, the accident has been quite traumatic for her. In fact, the family doctor has prescribed a heavy sedative, and I believe that she has at last fallen asleep.” Battagliatti was standing in the doorway, blocking any farther advance.

  McGarr said, “You know Superintendent O’Shaughnessy, don’t you, Mr. Chairman?” and made it necessary for Battagliatti to offer O’Shaughnessy his hand, as he had to McGarr. Thus, McGarr stepped by his right side. The little man twisted his neck around to watch McGarr, who said, “Actually, I think at this time you’d be more helpful to me, sir. May I be frank with you?” McGarr looked directly at Battagliatti.

  “Why yes, of course.”

  “Where can we talk?” McGarr hooked his arm through Battagliatti’s and began walking him down the hall. He opened several doors, until he found a small, vacant sitting room.

  As they were about to step in, a maid appeared in the foyer. She was carrying a small tray with a cup and saucer, teapot, and accessories on it.

  “Don’t go in there!” Battagliatti hissed at her. “How many times must I tell you she’s resting?”

  “But she——I——” The maid was flustered. She was young, dark, and somewhat too well built.

  “Do as I say or I’ll have you fired.”

  She flushed and scurried back into the kitchen.

  McGarr noted that Battagliatti’s attitude seemed strange for a Communist.

  When McGarr got Battagliatti seated, he pulled a desk chair over so that he could talk to him confidentially, as it were, in whispers. McGarr then glanced at O’Shaughnessy, who stood behind Battagliatti and leaned against the wall. They had used this technique dozens of times before to intimidate suspects.

  Battagliatti twisted around to see where O’Shaughnessy was. The towering Garda superintendent looked down at the little man as though he could eat him. And Battagliatti’s features, although handsome, were too diminutive for a man. Thus, he appeared doll-like, and, now that he was aging, like one that a craftsman with a perverse wit had designed. His hair was flecked with gray. He began to say, “I see no reason for this——”

  McGarr placed his hand on his sleeve and, looking at the door, said, “Enrico Rattei’s been arrested for the murder of Colin Cummings. Accessory, I mean.” He turned only his eyes to Battagliatti. These gestures, McGarr well knew, were histrionic but designedly so. It gave another dimension to their discussion.

  There was something curious about this little man, as though the whole experience here in the Ricasoli apartments—the murder, its aftermath, his present stewardship of Enna Ricasoli’s affairs—was heightened for him, who had done so much in his life and now controlled a province and had a say in the national political life of Italy. “But no! That’s impossible,” said Battagliatti. He adjusted his metal-frame glasses. “I just saw him an hour ago.”

  “He’s been released, of course. They’ll never keep a powerful man like him in the jug. Especially when he’s got powerful political friends like you, signor.”

  Battagliatti’s eyes wavered a bit hearing that. He then said, “This must be some sort of mistake. That row between Cummings and him was a silly schoolboy gesture, absurd and romantic. Enrico Rattei is a man of the world. He wouldn’t do something like this.”

  “Love is a most absurd emotion, Mr. Chairman. Did you know that Rattei had been seeing Enna Ricasoli in London on a regular basis?”

  Again Battagliatti twisted around to look at O’Shaughnessy.

  “That maybe ENI’s involvement in the Scottish oil fields was just an excuse for him to be in London often?”

  Did McGarr then see Battagliatti flush? Certainly his nostrils dilated, and he straightened his tie.

  “Some say they were lovers, you know, in a carnal sense. I have here an address.” McGarr began to reach for his pocket secretary. “It’s a place in London that wealthy men sometimes use when they’ve got company and want to remain discreet. Of course, they’ve got to pay a great deal for the privacy.”

  “That’s a lie!” Battagliatti blurted out, then twisted around to O’Shaughnessy once more. “Can’t he sit down?”

  “No, no,” McGarr went on in the same even tone. “This place exists por una relazióne amorosa.”

  And then the discussion switched into Italian. “That’s an insult to the poor woman—wife of a murdered husband!—who is resting in the other room. That’s an affront to this noble family, to Siena, to——And, what’s more, the whole idea is incredible. Enna Ricasoli is a lady, in every sense.” He straightened the lapels of his gray jacket.

  “She never told her husband she went out with Rattei.”

  “That’s because her husband was a boor.”

  McGarr furrowed his brow.

  “That’s right, a social imbecile.”

  McGarr held out his palms, “Ma, signor! Il uòmo poveretto!”

  “The poor man doesn’t need any lies told about him. He was a cretin and, what’s more, he was an Englishman. You two have no love for the English, I trust.” Yet agai
n, he began to twist around to O’Shaughnessy.

  “I try not to think in categories,” said McGarr. “Do you know if Enrico Rattei is licensed to fly a helicopter?”

  “No. We’re both very busy men. I wouldn’t know that.”

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Licensed to fly a helicopter?”

  “I leave such things up to lesser mortals.”

  Once more, this statement implied an attitude that seemed strange for a Communist.

  “What size are Rattei’s feet? Do you know?”

  McGarr glanced down at Battagliatti’s feet. His shoes were narrow and tiny, like a woman’s, like those that had made the impressions in the soft earth behind the Hitchcock summer residence in Dingle.

  Battagliatti started chuckling, “What is this—some sort of a game? Am I supposed to know that?”

  “Not really.” McGarr stood. “I know you want to help your friend.”

  As though relieved, Battagliatti stood and turned so that O’Shaughnessy was no longer behind him. “And that I shall. I am a man who is not without a certain amount of influence in Siena,” he said, smiling wryly, “and I shall see that this entire, unfortunate matter is cleared up quickly.” He held out his hand to McGarr. “Thank you for coming to me with this information, Signor McGarr.

  “And you too, Signor O’——”

  O’Shaughnessy merely grasped the man’s hand and stared at him. Indeed, alongside the Garda superintendent, Battagliatti did appear doll-like.

  Down in the piazza, McGarr and O’Shaughnessy turned into Al Mangia Ristorante and ordered two glasses of Elban white wine. Tasting his, which had a coppery color and just the slightest tang of salt air, McGarr looked at O’Shaughnessy. McGarr didn’t need to say, “Stay with him, Liam. Make yourself conspicuous. If he asks why you’re following him, say it’s for his own protection. Who knows, Rattei might try to have all Enna Cummings’s friends killed, too.”