Death in August

by Marco Vichi

  ‘No, please, I don’t want to disturb anyone.’

  ‘Mamma! I said there’s a gentleman here!’

  ‘Never mind, signora.’

  ‘No, no, here she comes now.’ Bordelli saw a wraith flutter in the darkness of the room behind them, but at first glance she seemed not to advance an inch. It was Mamma. She took a very long time to reach the door. She was small, tiny, all bones. She stood as though hung from her neck, her voice almost inaudible.

  ‘Who’s here?’ she said. There was a slight whistle in her voice.

  ‘This gentleman, here, wanted to know about the villa next door,’ the daughter said.

  ‘Your daughter tells me you hear noises there,’ said Bordelli.

  ‘Where should I look?’ the mother asked.

  ‘She’s blind,’ the daughter explained. Bordelli took another step forward.

  ‘I’m here, signora. Pleased to meet you.’ The mother extended a tiny, skeletal hand. Bordelli held those little bones for only a moment, fearing he might break them. The old woman took three small, futile steps across a single tile, then regained her breath after that exhausting greeting.

  ‘What is it you wanted to know?’ she said, mouth quivering. Bordelli looked her straight in the eye. Her eyeballs were covered by white veils veined with capillaries.

  ‘Your daughter was telling me you hear noises next door,’ he said.

  The old woman made a vague gesture, which must have corresponded to some expression of exuberance in her younger days.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. Many sounds, many, many sounds.’

  ‘What sort of sounds, signora?’

  ‘Many sounds. Many, many, many, many …’

  ‘Mamma, do you understand? The gentleman wants to know what kind of sounds … Stop acting senile.’ Bordelli wondered how he might extricate himself. His hand in his pocket fidgeted with his car keys. The transparent old woman joined her hands together and then pulled them tightly against her breast.

  ‘At night, mostly. Many, many …’

  ‘Not when, Mamma. The gentleman would like to know what sort of sounds.’

  ‘Oh … all right …’

  ‘Tell him about the screams you heard last February.’

  Bordelli pretended to be keenly interested.

  ‘What kind of screams?’ the daughter persisted, jabbing her mother in the shoulder with her fingertips.

  ‘Come on, Mamma, the gentleman is waiting.’

  ‘Yes, yes … terrible screams, terrible, terrible screams … like animals …’

  The daughter intervened.

  ‘But they weren’t animals, I’m sure of that!’ she said very seriously, opening her eyes wide to emphasise the point. Meanwhile her mother seemed to have woken up and was eager to speak.

  ‘I have a cousin who’s mad, and I used to go and see him until ’46,’ she said.

  The daughter gave a start at the sound of these words, taking such offence that she almost began to cry. She started slapping her mother lightly on the hands.

  ‘Why did you say that, Mamma? Why did you say that now? Eh? Did you have to go and say that? Eh?’

  ‘Let me speak … You see, sir, I so hate my sister … she drove my grandson mad.’ The daughter clenched her dentures, growled, and stalked away as if she would never return. The mother continued speaking calmly.

  ‘The only other place I ever heard such screams was in the madhouse. Now do you understand? Are you still here, sir?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  The daughter reappeared and stood behind her mother. She looked a bit calmer. Bordelli wanted only to run away.

  ‘I’m so pleased to have met you both,’ he said, holding out his hand. The mother started waving her hands in the air.

  ‘Don’t you want to hear about the shots?’ she said.

  ‘What shots?’

  ‘They are so loud, so so loud, that they wake me up.’

  ‘Pistol shots?’

  ‘So, so loud.’

  ‘Mamma! You don’t understand! The man wants to know if they were pistol shots.’

  ‘Ah, that’s so nice of him …’

  ‘No, Mamma, you don’t understand …’

  ‘… so, so nice.’

  ‘Mamma!’ the daughter shouted. Bordelli felt he should intervene, and made a slight bow towards the daughter.

  ‘Please don’t disturb your mother any further, I beg you. I’ve understood everything perfectly, thank you. Thank you ever so much. Goodbye.’

  The mother took two tiny steps forward.

  ‘Do come see us some time, sir, we’re always here, all alone,’ she said.

  ‘Mamma, why do you say that? Why?’

  ‘Because it’s true,’ the mother whimpered. Bordelli said goodbye again, loudly, so they would hear, and took to his heels. Behind him the argument continued. The daughter was furious.

  ‘Did you really have to go and say that? Eh? Why did you say that? Tell me why!’ she kept saying, enraged.

  The mother wasn’t listening to her.

  ‘Adele, call the gentleman back here … we didn’t tell him about the grunting noises …’

  ‘Tell me why you said that! Tell me why! Why?’

  The great front door closed, and silence returned. Bordelli was bathed in sweat, but at last he was free.

  ‘The devil,’ he said to himself. He would have given his right hand for a cigarette. It was possible that mother and daughter had heard only mating cats and sputtering cars, but still they had managed to give the villa an even stranger air.

  He was about to go back into the garden when a white Fiat 500 pulled up. Stepping out of the car was a small, thin man of about sixty with a wrinkly mouth and a tiny skull that narrowed vaguely at the temples. He approached Bordelli with a hesitant step. Behind his enormous eyeglasses he wore a pained expression.

  ‘I’m looking for Inspector Bordelli,’ he said.

  ‘I am he.’

  ‘I am Dr Bacci, Signora Pedretti’s personal physician.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘Poor woman. I still can’t believe it,’ said Dr Bacci, truly saddened. They walked through the garden and into the villa. Bordelli stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you some questions about your patient,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I would like to see her first.’

  ‘By all means. She’s upstairs. I’ll wait for you in that room over there,’ Bordelli said, pointing to one of the sitting rooms. The doctor trudged up the stairs, head bobbing to one side. He returned a few minutes later and rejoined Bordelli. Stopping in the middle of the room, he stood completely still and stared into space. Bordelli had made himself comfortable on a sofa that smelled strongly of old velvet.

  ‘Tell me, Dr Bacci, we know that the signora suffered from asthma … but to what degree?’

  Bacci turned round, in a daze.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I was asking whether your patient’s asthma was serious, or if, perhaps-’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. She suffered from tissual asthmatic allergy, a rather serious form of it, I should say.’

  ‘Could it prove fatal?’

  The doctor began to wander slowly about the room, hands at his sides, eyes darting from painting to painting. There was great sadness in his voice.

  ‘The signora was allergic to many types of pollen. She sometimes had violent attacks, but never anything life-threatening.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  Bacci turned to face the inspector. He looked bewildered.

  ‘To tell you the truth, there was one plant that could be very dangerous,’ he said. Bordelli waited to hear which plant. The doctor began to move again and stopped in front of the portrait of a judge dressed in ermine, hunching his shoulders round his head.

  ‘Ilex paraguariensis,’ he continued, ‘commonly called mate, a typically tropical plant. Its pollen would have been deadly to Signora Pedretti.’

 
; Bordelli coughed into his fist.

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘So much the better. Tell me, Doctor, how did Signora Pedretti ever find out?’

  ‘Find what out?’

  ‘That she was allergic to that tropical pollen.’

  The doctor took his eyes off the painting and returned to Bordelli. He said that from a very young age the signora had always travelled a great deal. A few years earlier, during a stay in Colombia, she had experienced a very serious attack and had to be rushed to hospital.

  ‘They snatched her from the jaws of death. It was almost a miracle.’

  The Colombian doctors discovered that the flowering mate had triggered the attack. The signora spent several days in hospital and recovered quite nicely in spite of everything. But the terrible experience had changed her, and after her return she hardly ever went out of the house any more.

  ‘I used to say to her: Signora, you mustn’t live like a recluse. Colombia is on the other side of the world. That plant doesn’t grow here.’

  ‘So, in short, that plant was the only thing that might trigger a fatal attack.’

  Dr Bacci removed his spectacles, which were as thick as glass-bottoms, and pressed his eyeballs hard with his fingers. He resumed walking along the walls of the room.

  The inspector stretched his legs, which had grown numb.

  ‘As far as I know, yes, it was the only thing.’

  ‘And what can you tell me about Asthmaben?’ Bordelli asked.

  ‘The signora always kept a bottle within reach. Luckily she responded well to it. Twenty drops, and in a matter of seconds, she could breathe again. That doesn’t happen with everyone, I can assure you.’

  ‘And what would happen if she didn’t take it?’ asked Bordelli.

  ‘It’s hard to say. Probably in normal cases she would have a few minutes of crisis, but I really don’t think she would die.’

  ‘With that tropical plant, on the other hand-’

  ‘With mate it’s almost certain that, without Asthmaben, she would die within minutes, especially after her previous crisis in Colombia.’

  ‘And with Asthmaben?’

  ‘Well, I have no proof, obviously. But I’m fairly convinced that with a double dose she would have been all right.’

  The inspector sighed by way of conclusion.

  ‘So, if I’ve understood correctly, seeing that there was a bottle of Asthmaben on her bedside table, we can rule out that she was killed by an asthma attack. Is that right?’

  ‘I can’t swear to it, of course, since asthma is a treacherous disease and can cause death by heart failure. The only thing we know for certain is that we are in God’s hands.’

  Bordelli remained silent, fingers pinching his chin, thinking of something. Then he stood up and held his hand out to the doctor.

  ‘That’ll be all for now, thank you. I’ll ring you if I need you again.’ They shook hands. The doctor was trembling a little.

  ‘I am very grieved by this,’ he said slowly. ‘Signora Pedretti was not a very pleasant person, but I was fond of her. Very fond.’ He said it in the tone of someone confessing to an unrequited love. His bloodshot eyes, huge behind their lenses, seemed to dance. Then he gave a sort of smile and left. Bordelli collapsed on the sofa again. He didn’t like the look of this. Didn’t like it at all.

  A few moments later he heard the stretcher-bearers on the stairs and went back into the entrance hall. The stretcher with Signora Pedretti’s mortal remains passed before him, covered entirely by a white sheet. Russo and Bellandi touched the visors of their caps to say goodbye to Bordelli, and left. Diotivede was the last to come down, his medical case swinging in his hand like a schoolboy’s satchel.

  ‘Could you give me a lift?’ he asked.

  They headed back to town together, with the Beetle backfiring and spitting flames out of the exhaust pipe. Someone had told Bordelli it might be a dirty filter or something similar. It was a Volkswagen, which was saying a lot, but now and then, it too needed a little medical care.

  ‘What are your thoughts about this murder?’ Diotivede asked.

  ‘First we have to establish that she was actually killed.’

  ‘You still have some doubt?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Then you really must be tired.’

  ‘I’ve already said that.’

  They fell silent. This happened often when they were in the car together; each ruminated as if he was alone. The Beetle advanced slowly, as if it, too, was thinking. The sky began to lighten; it was already past five. Bordelli’s window and vent were both open, but he was sweating just the same. Diotivede had never had much trouble with the weather. Summer or winter, he never complained.

  They descended into town, along Via Volta, and crossed the Ponte del Pino on their way to Diotivede’s house. The only sign of life was a few stray dogs roaming about.

  ‘I want to have a dinner party at my place. Feel like coming?’ said Bordelli.

  Diotivede rubbed his head with his hand.

  ‘Why not?’ he said.

  The sun was already rising over the city, but Bordelli’s night was not over yet. After dropping Diotivede off at home in Via dell’Erta Canina, he went straight to police headquarters to have a chat with Maria, Signor Pedretti-Strassen’s lady companion. By this point he was so tired he would never have been able to sleep.

  The woman had been waiting for him for nearly an hour, sitting on the bench outside his office. She was in a whiny state, hands full of wet handkerchiefs, white hair gathered in a tidy ponytail. He had her sit down in front of his desk. She was a tiny little thing, with big round eyes and a lipless mouth. She looked like some sort of nocturnal bird. Bordelli offered her a glass of water and waited for her to calm down. Once the woman had stopped sobbing, he asked what made her think the signora’s death was a murder. She waved her hands over her head and, starting to cry again, talked about the greed of the signora’s nephews and their respective wives, whom she termed ‘witches’, emphasising the tch sound.

  ‘They were just waiting for the signora to die, you could see it in the eyes of those two milksops and their whores!’ she said, sobbing again. Bordelli objected that greed might be a sin, but it was not a crime. Maria twisted her mouth up.

  ‘Wait till you see them in person; they’re wicked. They killed her, I know it, I feel it.’

  Bordelli felt a drop of sweat roll down his belly and stick to his shirt.

  ‘What is Signora Pedretti’s degree of kinship with these nephews?’

  ‘They are the sons of a sister of hers, who drowned in the lake at Lausanne ten years ago.’

  ‘An accident?’

  ‘They called it a suicide.’

  ‘What sort of work do these nephews do?’

  Maria grimaced.

  ‘They sell houses,’ she said disdainfully. ‘They have none of the Pedrettis’ class.’

  The inspector rifled through his drawers, searching again for a cigarette. He found two under a sheaf of papers and lit one.

  ‘Tell me, Maria, what did Signora Pedretti herself think of her two nephews?’

  ‘In their presence she never let anything show; but with me she would vent her feelings. She used to called them “the two worms”.’

  ‘And what can you tell me about her asthma?’

  Maria confirmed that the signora’s rare attacks usually subsided in a matter of minutes, thanks to the Asthmaben. Bordelli repeated what Dr Bacci had told him; that asthmatic allergy was a treacherous illness.

  ‘They killed her …’ she whimpered again.

  ‘We shall perform a very thorough post-mortem,’ said Bordelli. He then asked her to explain Signora Pedretti’s difficult character, and she burst into tears again.

  ‘She was a bit authoritarian, and not very generous, but, deep down, she was a very good person. Mostly, she was very, very lonely.’

  ‘When did
you see her for the last time?’

  ‘Yesterday evening at eight. I always leave at that hour,’ and down came the tears, the nose in the handkerchief. The inspector never knew what to do in front of weeping women. His first impulse was always to pat them on the shoulder and utter some trite words of encouragement, but he always ended up letting it drop and simply waited in silence for the tears to run their course.

  As soon as Maria stopped sobbing, Bordelli asked her whether Signora Pedretti had any other close relatives. She pulled another handkerchief out of her purse and blew her nose, trying not to make any noise: first one nostril, then the other.

  ‘There’s a brother, who’s half crazy. He didn’t come to see her very often,’ she said.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Dante.’

  ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘In an old house at Mezzomonte.’

  ‘What sort of relations did he have with his sister?’

  ‘They spoke over the telephone rather often. They would have long conversations, and sometimes I would actually hear the signora laugh,’ she said, opening her eyes wide.

  ‘Was it so unusual for her to laugh?’ asked Bordelli.

  Maria raised her eyebrows and bobbed her head up and down.

  ‘Very unusual. She hardly ever laughed.’

  ‘Whereas, with her brother …’

  ‘With her brother she laughed a lot. And when she said goodbye, she would blow kisses into the receiver.’

  Like Rosa, thought Bordelli.

  ‘You haven’t got this Dante’s telephone number by any chance, have you?’

  ‘I should have it, I think. Often it was I who dialled the number for Signora Pedretti.’ She rummaged through her handbag for a long time until she found a little telephone booklet. Between the pages was a loose piece of paper.

  ‘This must be it.’

  Bordelli took the scrap of paper, glanced at it, and set it down on the desk.

  ‘And where can I find the nephews?’

  ‘Oh, those two! They’re at the seaside villa, taking it easy. I’ll give you their telephone number.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘They always go on holiday together, the worms.’ The woman recited the number in a quavering voice, then started crying again. Bordelli waited another minute as Maria sniffled. Then he stood up.